Nurse in Waiting (6 page)

“I
’
ll try,” promised Joanna, though a trifle doubtfully. She wondered whether the doctor knew about that other source of annoyance to Roger
—
Mrs. Carnehill’s work. But she supposed he did, since he seemed to know the family very well.

Meanwhile she was glad that she would have his company at luncheon—she hadn’t been looking forward to a meal alone with Shuan!

When she went in to Roger in the afternoon he said abruptly:

“McKiley is coming to dinner. If Mother isn’t back, will you see that he comes to me afterwards?”

There was an imperious arrogance in his tone which made Joanna wonder whether the Carnehills, like many another Irish family, traced its descent from kings.

After a pause Roger went on: “You’ve met McKiley. What do you think of him?”

Joanna looked her surprise. “Why
—
I hardly know. He was very kin
d—”

“M’m. Gallantry becomes him. But surely—your first real contact in this country, and no first impressions?” Again the blue eyes were veiled with amusement.

Joanna smiled. “Well—nothing particularly lasting, I think. He invited me to go and see the Dower House one day, I remember.”

“That should be both amusing—and instructive! Didn’t he issue a more specific invitation than ‘one day’?”

“No,” Joanna’s eyes twinkled. “He suggested that I should go when I felt in need of “light relief’ from my work here”

Roger frowned. “Damned impertinence! Why didn’t you snub him?”

An imp of mischief entered Joanna. “Perhaps,” she said carefully, “because I didn’t know then how much in need of ‘light relief’ I might be. Safety first!”

“Well, do you know now?” He sounded offended, and she realized that her joke had not been too well taken. She said quickly: “I’m sorry. I oughtn’t to have said that. It sounded
—”

“—Coy and unexpectedly cheap, I thought! But I suppose you’re right. You’ve got to keep something in reserve for yourself, to prevent people like us from thinking that we’ve hired more of you than your services. I daresay you’ve even got a private life of your own, over there in England?”

“I daresay.” Joanna’s tone was dry. “Most people have, haven’t they?” What an incalculable person he was! In as many sentences he had swept from offence to rebuke and now to mild impertinences of his own.

“Er
—
family
—
and all that?”

“My people are dead.”

“Habitat?”

“London.”

“Hobbies? Recreations?”

Joanna laughed. “Oh
—
the usual feminine variety. Not very interesting ones.”

“Evidently you’ve been taught not to confide in strangers! How long must you know me before it will be proper to mention what an orphan nurse in London does with her spare time?”

Joanna picked up his tea-tray and prepared to leave the room.

“I’d willingly tell you now, if I thought you’d be
i
nterested. But you wouldn’t be,” she remarked.

“No, perhaps not.” He stretched his arms rather w
e
arily above his head and appeared, in a way that wa
y
characteristic of him, to have lost all interest in conversation. He said suddenly:

“By the way, the dogs haven’t been in here since
morning
. Does that represent a moral victory for you—or a gathering of the storm?”

Joanna
paused by the door. “Neither, I hope,” she said quietly. “I don’t want to quarrel with Shuan. Please don’t make me think it’s inevitable!”

He laughed. “My dear
Joanna—
as if you or I have any say in the inevitability of that!”

By some incalculable caprice of the kitchen, dinner was served early that evening, and between seeing to Roger’s own meal and appearing in the dining-room Joanna had no time to change out of uniform.

J
ustin McKiley took her hand, and after the same kind of sweeping appraising glance as he had given her at Tulleen station, smiled as if there were some secret alliance between them.
René
Menden, the young Belgian, slim, upright and with darkly polished hair, bowed stiffly and said:

“I have not been invited to dinner, but Mr. McKiley has said that I am ever welcome, he is sure. Correct my verbs, please?”

He spoke to
Joanna
, but his glance was for Shuan, who repeated mechanically: “I wasn’t invited, but Mr. McKiley said I should always be welcome.
”

René
smiled gratefully at her. “Ah, yes. The past indefinite tense, rather than the past definite! I have forgotten.”

“I forgot,” corrected Shuan again, this time sounding bored.

At dinner
Joanna
watched them interestedly. It was plain that Mrs. Carnehill was right and that
René
had no eyes for anyone but Shuan. She snubbed him or ignored him or corrected his English with a bored, patient disinterest which, in his place,
Joanna
felt she would have resented. She was glad when, at the end of the meal, he persuaded her to take him to find a book he was going to borrow.

Joanna
said to
J
ustin McKiley: “Mr. Carnehill told me to ask you to go and see him after dinner.”

He stirred his coffee and did not move. “Ah, time enough,” he said indifferently.

Joanna stood up. “Then I’d better go back to him
.”

“What’s the hurry? I’m going to see him in a minute. Take your coffee with me at least?”

Reluctantly Joanna sat down again. She could hardly do otherwise, though she felt that by doing so she was helping him to prolong that elusive ‘minute’.

He said abruptly: “The Americans have a word for it, I believe.”

Joanna looked her bewilderment

“ ‘Rooting,’ I think they call it. At dinner you were rooting hard for young
René
digging your nails into your palms with anxiety for him! You are just like Mrs. Carnehill—ready to spread your wings over him to save him from Shuan’s brutality!”

“I thought she was almost rude to him, once or twice,” replied Joanna rather coolly.

“Well, you’ll agree that the young fool asks for
it.
Let him fight his own battles. In any case, surely you’re too young and—too lovely, if that isn’t forward of me!—to adopt this mothering attitude! Or does it”—again his glance appraised her—
“
come with the uniform, so to speak?”

“I don’t think I know what you mean?”

“Don’t you?” His smile flashed at her. “Come now, d’you mean to tell me that you’ve never been tempted to play a part which you felt was becoming to your uniform?”

“I don’t think so. I
—”

“Nor sheltered behind it? Retired into the cold impersonality of it, in order to get yourself out of a difficult situation? Nor, conversely, used the damned attractiveness of it for your own ends?”

Joanna said evenly: “If I did any of those things, wouldn’t that make me a very artificial person?”

His eyes mocked her. “No. Merely—a woman! And a woman must make her own armor—as she must make her own weapons. I’ve always supposed that a pretty nurse could use her uniform as either
—
on occasion.”

“Indeed? Well, it’s a point of view that’s as interesting as it’s highly imaginative!
”
retorted Joanna.

“Not so imaginative! F
o
r instance, you are using your own against me now, just as you snubbed me yesterday with your professional ‘I usually enjoy my cases’!”

“Really? And am I employing my armor—or my weapons?”

“Oh, your armor! No doubt you’ll be keeping your weapons for bigger game—the Harley Street specialist, the highly eligible patient
—”

Joanna rose abruptly. This foolish conversation had gone far enough. “Hadn’t you better go to Mr. Carnehill now?” she inquired coolly.

He had risen too. “I suppose so,” he said as they moved towards the door together. For an instant he laid a hand lightly upon her arm.

“You’ll remember our pact? That you will come to the Dower House when things get too much for you here?”

“Why should they ever do that?”

He shrugged. “Maybe they won’t. In that case, I should regard your visit merely as a formal call. But
—
I think you will come.”

To her chagrin, Joanna found no adequate reply to the cool effrontery of this assumption. As she hesitated, the door opened and Mrs. Carnehill came in.

“Ah, there you are, Justin,” she said. “I’m sorry. I was kept later than I expected in the city. You’ve had your dinner? Have you seen Roger?”

“On my way now. Miss Merivale and I have been keeping each other company over our coffee.”

“Well, do go to Roger. He was rather insistent. But”—she took off her gloves and nervously dragged them into a rag of tautness between her hands
—
“don’t quote more figures at him than you can help. He worries so
—”

Justin spread his hands in a gesture which seemed to reassure her. “I can’t quote figures. I haven’t any with me. Just an overall picture of how things are going
—
that’s all he wants?”

“I—think so.” She watched him nervously as he left the room. Then she turned to Joanna. “They don’t care for each other, those two. But you liked Justin
—
didn’t you?”

It was a question which Joanna had already asked herself. But so far she had not found the answer.

CHAPTER FOUR

During the next
few days Joanna was to realize that, until then, she had seen nothing which could be described as one of Roger’s “black moods
.”
But of the depth of depression into which he was plunged after his interview with Justin there could be no doubt.

He would not read, took no interest in food and accepted services done for him with an ungraciousness which tried her patience to the utmost.

More than once she wanted to bring Dr. Beltane out to him again, but Mrs. Carnehill, harassed as she was, did not seem to think it a good idea.

“Beltie is a good sort, but only seems to irritate Roger when he’s like this. And I think even Beltie knows it, for he says we needn’t call him unless Roger is physically worse.”

Joanna, remembering the doctor’s suggestion that she should say a word to Mrs. Carnehill, said: “No, he’s in no pain and, so far as I can gather, is sleeping fairly well. But—do you think his mind is occupied enough?”

Roger’s mother looked vaguely disturbed. “I don’t know. He reads and—normally—he doesn’t complain of being bored
—”

“But wouldn’t you say that these moods which beset him every so often are the very accumulation of boredom? He stands it as long as he can and then gives way to
—
this sort of thing.”

Mrs. Carnehill looked at her doubtfully. “D’you think so now? But why would he be bored? Haven’t we all got our brains fairly wracked out, thinking of diversions for him? And nearly always he has someone with him!”

Joanna
felt she began to understand what the doctor had meant when he said Roger was being ‘smothered’ by devotion. She said carefully: “I didn’t mean amusements or company, so much as exercise for his mind. Wouldn’t it be possible for him to take some share in the running of the estate? I understand he used to do it all, with Mr. McKiley’s help. Mustn’t he feel completely at a loss, without some responsibility for it?”

It was as if a curtain had been drawn guardedly across her companion’s face. She spoke more shortly than she had yet done to
Joanna
. “He’s not fit for it. I told you—he and Justin don’t care for each other. And Roger won’t understand that
J
ustin’s methods are different. There’s no point in setting them at loggerheads. While Roger is ill we can’t do without Justin.

“But seeing
J
ustin always makes him like this. That’s why I try to keep them apart as much as possible. It only proves my point—that having to concern himself with the estate only worries him.”

Joanna
gave it up. But she could not agree with her employer. She felt sure that Roger’s irritation arose from atrophy of the powers he had had before his illness, perhaps even from a jealously of the virile Mr. McKinley. Lying there helplessly, he felt himself to be less than the man he had once been. And until he lost that idea
Joanna
felt sure they would so no improvement in him.

She was wondering how she could help him when he suddenly broached the subject himself.

“I wish
you’d
get home figures out of somebody,” he growled. “I’ve struggled long enough against this conspiracy of silence Mother has set up. Ask
René
Menden—he ought to have some idea by now of what goes on.”

“But
—”

He looked at her with a kind of cold contempt.

“So you’re a party to it too? Or else you’re going to say primly ‘How can I go behind Mr. McKiley’s back?’ All right. Don’t bother.”

“I wasn’t going to say anything of the sort,” retorted Joanna. “I was merely going to point out that I’ve met your student only once, that I don’t know where to find him during his working-day and that I’ve no idea what you want to know.”