Nurse with a Dream (20 page)

Alan detached himself from a group of his colleagues and moved towards Jacqueline. “Can this be true?” he inquired in a low voice. “If so, I must apologise sincerely for knocking your fiancé about. You should have told me.”

She was confused. “We—arranged it later, by letter.”

He did not fail to notice her distress. She had blushed scarlet when making her announcement, but now she was paler than usual. “Jacky, are you happy about this? No one is putting pressure on you?”

“I’m quite happy.” It was no use making a gesture to help the man you loved if you threw up the sponge the minute things became hard. She had to see this through. She lifted her head proudly. “I’m quite happy, thank you.” It was a moment before he answered. Then he bent his head gravely. “I understand. Then one can only wish you joy—and good luck.”

A posse of her friends had now worked through the crowd to her. She was completely surrounded and Alan had to withdraw to safe masculine company. Matron having retired, the doctors and Sisters were now saying goodbye, anyway.

“Every happiness, Jacky!”

“Secretive little monkey!”

“Congratters, ducks!”

After a few minutes of this, Sister Clarke sailed forward, tall and awe-inspiring in her high Sister’s cap. The chatterers fell away politely, leaving Jacqueline and Deborah in a little pool of isolation.

“Congratulations—on your common sense.”

“You forced my hand. Guy doesn’t even know, and I feel awful about it. Why do you want me to marry him—you don’t even like me?”

“If Guy wants you, I don’t see why he shouldn’t have you. It gets you out of the way here, scotches rumours conveniently—and after all”—she smiled with her thin lips, her eyes stony—“I shan’t have to live at Timberfold. It doesn’t matter to me who Guy marries.”

A grand, self-sacrificing gesture is easy to make; not so easy to sustain after the tumult and the shouting have died. For a little while, the fuss and excitement of being engaged had borne her along and she had almost forgotten that the man in the case did not even know—yet.

She stared helplessly at the sheet of writing-paper before her.
Dear Guy
...

CHAPTER SEVEN

Guy
was delighted with what he considered the success of his strong-man tactics. He chuckled over Jacqueline’s evasion of him on St. David’s Day, saying he liked a girl with spirit, and bought her an engagement ring so large that it made her gasp with dismay. On her slight finger it felt heavy, like a fetter, and she was glad to have an excuse not to wear it at the hospital.

Diana Lovell was going home, with a great deal of hoo-ha and flutter. “Engaged, Nurse?” Her blue eyes opened very wide. “I thought your heart belonged to Daddy. What about poor Alan?”

Jacqueline smiled. “Moral—never believe half you hear, Miss Lovell. Sorry you won’t be able to launch your joke at the Club.”

“It would fall a bit flat now.” She looked disappointed for a moment. “I’d planned a tremendous leg-pull, and he’ll get away scot-free, the brute!”

Which, thought Jacqueline, as she folded soft-coloured nightdresses into a white hide suitcase, is exactly what I intended.

Now Guy had got his own way, he was charming, attentive, ready to defer to her wishes. More often than not, his car was outside the hospital when she went off duty. He waved her protests away.

“The land won’t run away. Maybe I’m neglecting it a bit now, but I’ve served it all my life and it will be waiting when we’re married. So long as the stock is tended and fed...”

There were moments when she felt she had done the right thing. Was she to stay single all her life, with all the frustration that meant—no husband, home or children—for the sake of a man out of her reach? But that was when things went wrong at St. Simon’s and the nurses had an epidemic of I-wish-I-could-get-out-of-this-hole.

It was when she thought of Timberfold, cold, hopelessly old-fashioned, lost among the far moors, that she shivered; and when she thought of Connie.

Her grandparents received the news characteristically, knowing they would not make the long journey, she had painted Timberfold in glowing colours and hardly mentioned Connie at all. It was suitable, they wrote, that she should go to Timberfold as a bride; proper that money and land should be kept within the family. She devoured their letters, reading the heartache between the lines, and could hardly see Grand-peer’s thin elegant writing for tears, She was tempted to pack and run back to the only home she had ever known.

Only the knowledge that one cannot run away from oneself restrained her. One must face the consequences of one’s actions. Wherever she went, she would still love Alan. She had to face a life without marriage and all that marriage meant—or marry a man who was not Alan.

In one thing she and Guy disagreed. She had promised to spend her next free week-end at the Moor Hen. Guy thought she ought to go to Timberfold.

“I keep my promises,” she told him firmly. “Anyway, they’ve invited you for dinner on Saturday. I don’t think Connie wants me—she wasn’t exactly enthusiastic when you told her of our engagement. Guy—what are we going to do about her?”

“Do? Nothing? Why should we?”

They were in the Picture House Cafe which, although it smelt of stale tobacco smoke and chips, was somewhere to sit down, away from the perpetual drizzle and cold winds of a Barnbury spring. Although it was only four o’clock, the customers were already tucking into high teas of fried plaice or sausage and chips, with pink iced cakes or flaky pastry which looked and tasted like charred greaseproof paper; it was a meal to ruin figure and complexion, but Jacqueline, like several other off-duty nurses in the café, demolished it with a healthy young appetite and a conscience as yet untroubled by weight or ageing skin. Guy was always uncritical of food, being used to Connie, and was usually hungry.

“You mean, she’s going to live at Timberfold after we are married?” she asked without much hope. She knew Guy’s views and respected them, though she told herself there was no harm in trying.

“It’s her home. Where else should she go?”

“I know, but—she’s queer. She gives me peculiar looks.” He laughed. “Poor old stick! That’s her face, it’s enough to stop a clock, but she can’t help it.”

“I feel she takes to me like a duck takes to poison. What if she changed me into a white mouse and set the cat on me?”

“My bird, just you keep on taking plenty of no notice. You’ll be mistress, not Con. I’ll make her understand.”

“I doubt if she
will
understand.”

“You underestimate Con, dear. As a matter of fact, she is keen for you to come for this week-end of yours.”

“How odd! I had the definite impression she resented me. However, I’m not giving up my holiday with the Medways. I like Mollie, and, remember, they will be practically our nearest neighbours.”

“Unless you count old Michael, Connie’s admirer. I say, Jacky—let’s marry them off.”

They giggled cosily together, and for a moment there was sympathy and harmony between them. She felt a quick, warm affection for the man—the same affection she felt, sometimes, for a patient, a stray dog, an injured bird; the desire to spend herself, to serve, to mother.

Almost without thinking she said, “I wonder what Phyllis Arnott thinks of our engagement. I haven’t seen her since I went on nights.”

He glanced at her quickly. “Phyllis? Why? What made you bring Phyllis up, all of a sudden? Maybe she doesn’t know, anyway.”

“In our enclosed world everybody knows everything. If you change your mind, the whole hospital hears you.” He dismissed Phyllis from the conversation. “Change your mind about the week-end.”

A tray, laden with plaice and chips, went past, and she stared at it in abashed horror. “How revolting meals look when one isn’t hungry any more. No, Guy. Don’t ask me again.” I will not, she resolved, exchanging Lance’s beautifully civilised cooking for Connie’s.

By judicious organisation, Jacqueline arrived at the Moor Hen early on Friday evening, and at once offered her services in the kitchen or dining-room. Her hosts would not hear of it, but gave her a delicious dinner and settled her in the lounge with a stack of glossy magazines while they coped with the Friday evening rush. Andy, the white poodle, handsomely grown but still a puppy at heart, offered her his rubber bone, and presently, exhausted himself, curled up on her lap and went to sleep.

She had wondered about Alan, hoping yet dreading that he would be at the inn for the week-end. Now she knew definitely he was not coming. He had telephoned to say he was detained in Barnbury. Mollie told Jacqueline so, and immediately marched into the kitchen to her husband.

“Give me back my tuppence, blooksucker. All is not lost—she loves him.”

Lance shouted over the hum of the electric-mixer. “Naturally. She’s engaged to him. I keep the tuppence. Go away, woman. I’m busy.”

“She loves Alan. I saw it in her face when I said he wasn’t coming.”

Lance switched off the mixer and peered at a mountain of whipped egg-white. “Why must women make life so complicated? If she loves A, why marry G?”

His wife sizzled with controlled patience. “That’s the point, you goon. That’s what Alan wants to know. He says she looks unhappy, and wonders if pressure is being applied.”

He folded cream into the mass. “Angel wife, why pressure?”

“I don’t know. If she were the long-lost heir or something—and Guy wanted to make sure of the farm.”

“Why not just assume that he loves her? Listen to the chaps in the bar talking—they’ll tell you the Clarke men marry those little fair women.”

“But why do the little fair women marry them?”

“The fascination of the snake for the rabbit. They’re always unhappy, I’m told.”

“Regular old gossip you’re becoming, my sweet. But this is
Jacky
we’re talking about. She’s our friend. We can’t let her marry that revolting creature and be unhappy. She’ll be a farmhouse drudge in five years—can’t we save her?”

Lance piled the egg-white and cream on top of delicate meringues and stepped back to admire his work. “When a woman is bent on self-immolation no one can stop her. You’re liable to be squashed flat if you try.”

“Immolation? Sacrifice? Do you mean she’s sacrificing herself for something or someone?”

“I shouldn’t be at all surprised. Examine it from that angle, my little private eye. And per-lease, my angel wife—
get out of my way
!”

Lulled by Andy’s feathery snores, the warmth of the peat fire, Jacqueline dozed lightly. When someone said her name, she sat erect at once, blinking and not, for the moment, aware of where she was.

“Jacky! It’s Guy. Did I wake you, my bird? I’m so sorry.”

For the space of a quick heart’s leap, she had imagined it was Alan. She tried not to show disappointment. “Guy, what on earth are you doing here? It’s to-morrow you are invited.” Then she noticed he was still in his working clothes. “Is anything wrong?”

“In a way. I’m sorry to butt in, but I can’t help it. I need your help at the farm. It will spoil your precious week-end and I’m terribly sorry, but I’m at my wits’ end.”

“If it’s as bad as that, my week-end is totally unimportant. What has happened?”

“Connie is down with lumbago. She’s had twinges before, but never like this. When I say down, I mean just that. She can’t put her foot to the ground. I can look after myself, but”—he spread his hands helplessly—“I can’t look after an old woman, Jacky. She can’t do a thing for herself.”

“What about a doctor, if she’s so bad?”

“She won’t hear of it. Says it will pass off in a few days,
with rest and warmth. But for those few days—”

She pushed Andy gently to the floor and stood up. “No rest for the wicked,” she said lightly. “Will you find Mollie and explain, while I go and pack. I’ll sleep at Timberfold to-night and Saturday, but I have to be at St. Simon’s on Sunday evening. Maybe she’ll be able to fend for herself by then.”

“Thanks.” He added gruffly, “I appreciate it, Jacky. This week-end meant a lot to you and I’m not spoiling it on purpose.”

‘Nobody has lumbago on purpose, and I do understand your predicament Don’t worry, it’s just one of those things.”

Mollie was waiting when she came downstairs with her case.

“Guy has explained. It’s disappointing, but I do see that you must go. If she improves, promise you’ll come back. Take this basket, you won’t want to cook on that huge old range. There’s a cold roast chicken, a trifle, and a cake. Lance made the trifle for to-morrow’s lunch, but he’ll just have to make another.”

Jacqueline accepted the basket gratefully. “You are the most understanding person I know, Mollie. I could howl with disappointment.”

“Duty can be a sickening nuisance, but when it calls, it calls. Don’t feel guilty about us—we’ll hope for better luck next time. I’ll say good-bye to Lance for you, he’s busy in the bar just now.”

Connie lay in the middle of a huge bed in a cavernous room heavy and dark with red wallpaper patterned in deeper crimson pineapples. She appeared to be in pain and accepted Jacqueline’s ministrations with a minimum of complaint. Indeed, she seemed to find some ease in being supported by pillows and hot-water bottles. The bottles were of the stone-jar type, shaped like a two-pound loaf with a screw stopper on top; they were awkwardly angular and uncomfortable, but the only alternative was a hot brick wrapped in flannel or an oven shelf.

“Let Guy fetch a doctor, Aunt Connie. This may not be lumbago.”

“Tis. I’ve had it before, never so bad, though. A few days’ rest
’
ull shift it, but you see how awkward ‘tis, for a lad. I’m right sorry I’ve browt you away from your holiday.”

“Don’t fret about that. Now, if we had you in hospital there’d be all sorts of things we could do for you.”

“I don’t doubt. But in a place like Timberfold we have things like back-ache and stomach-ache and babies and get along as best we can with what we have on hand. My Saul had his tonsils out on yon kitchen table when he wor a lad. You’ll take your own room—you know the one. Bed’s aired.”

So, instead of the pretty room at the Moor Hen, Jacqueline unpacked in her father’s great old chamber with the windows opening on to the moor. She hung her silk dress in a shadowy wardrobe, and placed the precious snapshot of her parents on the bedside table. Since she had slept here last there was a slight change in the room, which puzzled her vaguely, until she spotted it. Her grandmother’s portrait had been removed from its position over the chimneypiece and now hung over the bed.

She crossed the room and stared up at the painted face. It was crudely done, looking more like an inn-sign than a portrait; the figure was stiff and clumsy. The curved mouth drooped, the shoulders sagged slightly.

“Poor little Granny! When they painted you, you weren’t even a mother, and here I am, your grandchild. I’m Peter’s girl. You always loved Peter best, didn’t you? Saul was never really your boy.

“I’m going to marry Saul’s son, Granny. Shall I be happy? You must help me to make my home here, because I gave my promise and I won’t run away from it. Tell me how you managed my grandfather?”

It was a pity the portrait was so bad. It was hard
to make
the wooden flesh, the oddly-jointed hands, live and move. Only in the lips had the painter caught a flicker of life. In the waving candlelight, the mouth almost moved.

“I believe Peter grew up to be awfully like you, Granny. Let’s have a closer look.” She moved the candle to the little table, took up the laughing snapshot of her father and, kicking, off her shoes, stood on the bed to stare closely at her painted grandmother.

She moved to catch a better light, and stubbed her toe on one of those awkwardly shaped hot-water bottles which she had thrust into her own bed to air it She staggered, clutched and fell. She sat down with a bump on a goose-feather mattress and was not hurt in the least. But the picture came down with her, the heavy gilt frame crashing on to her pillow.

Horrified, she tried to lift the heavy object There was no glass, but she discovered the painting was on wood, not canvas, and astonishingly heavy. Nothing appeared to be broken, but when she examined the cord, it was rusted away, and the few remaining threads had parted quite easily; it had obviously been hanging on a rusty nail for years.

She glanced across to the chimney-piece. But when I came last, it hung
there,
so it has been moved fairly recently. Whoever moved it was shockingly careless not to replace the frayed cord. Why, I might have been killed if it had fallen on my head in the night.

She shivered, imagining the crash, the sudden waking to pain and terror, a moment of consciousness perhaps, then a plunge into oblivion in the suffocating darkness.

Panic took her in its grip. She had to be out of this house, away from its age-old passions and sorrows, generation upon generation of them, and out under the clean sky, the cold, serene stars. Like a blundering moth, she rushed to the window and leaned far out The roof of the ancient cart-shed was below, but she could not gauge the distance in the near-darkness and was afraid to plunge into the unknown.

The air was cool, and she was conscious for the moment of a great relief. Her heart was hammering madly. She leaned on the window frame recovering her breath.

Nothing, she knew, would induce her to sleep in that bed. The picture was down, there couldn’t be any more danger. Yet a thought as yet unformulated, nagged. A thought about the bed.

The bed’s aired. That is what Connie had said. So—Connie had been expecting her, the bed had been prepared.

Picture and all? She pushed that thought away with a shudder and concentrated on the other. How did Connie know she would come
—before
the lumbago? She couldn’t have aired the bed after the attack began. So the whole thing was a trap!

She pulled herself together. Her imagination was running away with her. She would find Guy’s room, explain about the picture and ask him to remove it. After he’d gone, she would wrap herself in a blanket and sleep in a chair by the open window.

As she drew the heavy door open gently, another thought struck her. A thought so frightening that the bedroom, a moment ago terrifying, became a refuge. She closed the door again and groped for a lock, a bolt. There was none.

No one, planning to injure or murder a guest, would trouble to
air the bed
first

So, if Connie aired the bed, who moved the picture and left it poised on a single torn and rusted thread? It must have been moved
to-day,
for the cord could not have lasted many hours.

She flicked a nervous tongue over dry lips. If not Connie, who? Not—oh, please Heaven, not Guy.

She brought a heavy old chair and propped it under the door handle; pulled a couple of blankets from the bed and took them, with a pillow, to a wicker chair by the window. Night duty had already taught her to snatch a wink of sleep with senses alert ready to wake at the slightest sound.

She watched the great stars wheeling over the moor a long time before she fell into a troubled sleep.

Dinner at the Moor Hen was over. Mrs. Fairbody, the washer-up, had hung a neat row of clean tea-towels before the gleaming white stove, left the sink as clean as a hound’s tooth, and pattered to her cottage on flat feet. The farmers and shepherds in the-bar were going home one by one, and Lance rolled down his sleeves, put on his .coat and went to find his wife and their guest.

Mollie was placidly darning socks in their own sitting-room, which did duty also as office, store-room and occasionally bed-room. “Where’s Jacky?” he asked. “Gone to bed, poor mite? She’s on night duty, isn’t she?”

Mollie explained. Lance listened carefully, a frown growing between his eyebrows. “You say Connie has been laid up all day with lumbago? Couldn’t get out of bed this morning?”

“That’s right. It’s sickening for Jacky, but you do see Guy couldn’t do everything for her. She needs a woman for a day or two—at least until she can walk.”

Lance reached for the telephone.

“What are you going to do? Guy says the old girl is nearly hysterical about not having a doctor.”

“Old girl, my foot. I’m ringing Alan. He’s got to come out here.”

“But he has an emergency operation—he told me so when he telephoned. It was to start at ten.”

“H’m. Twenty to. He’ll be at the hospital. With luck, I’ll catch him there. And if he can’t come out to-night, he must come first thing in the morning.”

She knelt on the end of the sofa and tugged at his coat. “Fiend! Don’t be so exasperating. You were laughing at me for being over-imaginative. Now you’re behaving as if it’s serious.”

“It is serious. Remember I drove to Elton Bottoms farm this morning, to collect those ducklings they promised me? The road passes Timberfold lane end, doesn’t it?”

She stared at him apprehensively. “You went to Timberfold?”

“Not likely! But who should hop off the bus at the end of the lane but Connie, with a shopping basket over her arm? She’d been to Winkford, I dare say—it’s market-day there, Fridays. She scuttled off down the lane towards the farm as lively as a flea.”

“This morning? But, Lance—lumbago can attack you in a minute. This doesn’t mean Guy’s story isn’t true.”

“Exactly!” He spoke dryly. “Let’s hope it
is
true. In the meantime, I’ll ring Alan. He asked us to be watchdogs for him, and I guess this is one time the watchdog barks.”

In the sane light of a fine morning, Jacqueline took her grandmother’s portrait and leaned it against the wall; stripped the bed, made it up again, and went downstairs to prepare breakfast for herself and Connie. She had heard Guy go out, whistling for Gypsy, some time earlier. He was whistling as he crossed the yard and did not glance up at her windows. She did not believe a man could plan evil at night and whistle so gaily in the morning.

In the kitchen the fire was alight, wood stacked on the hearth to dry, the heavy copper kettle filled and singing on a hook high over the flames. He had left everything as conveniently as he could for her, and she felt thankfully that such care exonerated him.

She decided to make scrambled egg on toast for Connie, and was hunting for pepper when Guy came in.

“Hello, darling! You look as fresh as the morning. Sleep well?”

“Not particularly. My grandmother nearly fell on me.”

“
What?
How come?”

“There’s a picture of Grandmother Clarke over the bed. At least there was—I propped it up by the wall. It dropped on my pillow.” She was watching him narrowly as she spoke.

“But that ghastly thing is over the fireplace. It’s heavy—we always used to say it was painted on the back of a barn door. Jacky, you might have been stunned. Hey, wait a minute.”

He tore upstairs two at a time, and came down soberly. “You might have been killed. How on earth did that thing get over the bed? And look at the picture cord, brittle as tinder. Oh, darling!” He took her in his arms and held her closely, pressing his cheek to her hair. She stood rigidly in his embrace, desperately sorry for him because, although he was so deeply moved, she felt nothing—nothing at all.

“Lucky for me I wasn’t.” She moved lightly away. “I must finish Connie’s breakfast tray, poor thing. She’ll be famished. Where does she keep pepper? I can’t find any.”

“I dunno. Try those drawers in the dresser, she keeps all sort of tranklements in there. I must get on with my work now. You all right?”

“Perfectly. I only need pepper to be completely happy. Run along.”

In the dresser drawers she found nothing but a dirty and faintly revolting magpie collection of the objects usually hoarded by a sluttish housewife, but a tiny cupboard between the drawers was more rewarding. At least she found half a nutmeg, some dusty dried herbs bundled together and tied with string. She sniffed them inquisitively—thyme, sage—and what was the other? She sniffed again, but there was no scent to the tiny flat pods tumbling out of a crumpled envelope. Yet I ought to know them, she pondered. They look so familiar. Black-ripe, opening to reveal a row of round flat seeds. In her mind’s eyes she saw the little pods hanging on a tree, but could not place them. How tantalising!