Return to Tremarth (8 page)

“You mean wash him and that sort of thing?” Charlotte asked, and Hannah nodded.

“It’s different for me,” she explained.

Charlotte agreed ... and wondered afterwards what would have happened if Hannah had been without any sort of training and the same set of circumstances had occurred.

When Tremarth really came to himself it was she, Charlotte, however, who was on hand to watch him frowning perplexedly round the room that was filled with the light of sunset. He lay listening for a few minutes to the monotonous surging of the sea, and for a while he watched the reflected light of the sea on the white-painted ceiling as if it fascinated him; and then he turned his dark head swiftly in Charlotte’s direction and asked her in quite a strong voice:

“What time is it?”

“It’s about half-past eight.”

“In the evening?”

“Yes.”

His grey eyes were frankly puzzled as they gazed at her.

“Why am I here? And where exactly am I?”

“This is Tremarth ... Tremarth House. Don’t you remember? You had an accident — in your car. It overturned on the road the night before last.”

His grey eyes grew so dark they appeared almost black for several seconds, and then the pupils became distended and she could have inserted a finger in the deep cleft between his brows.

“I don’t remember. I don’t remember anything. ..He looked very white in the warm light that filled the room, and because it appeared to be worrying him she went across to the windows and drew the curtains.

She bent over him very gently.

“But surely you remember Tremarth? It’s your favourite house! ”

“No.” He winced this time as he shook his head.

“You don’t remember that you wanted to buy it?”

“No.”

“You have no recollection at all of the accident?”

“None whatsoever.”

Charlotte hesitated, standing there beside his bed — that was in actual fact her bed. Her instincts warned her that she should refrain from questioning him and run along the corridor to Hannah’s room and waken her. Hannah might know how to deal with this situation, but she did not.

And to complicate everything a violent curiosity was stirring in her. It was almost a ‘must’ that she find out something.

“But you do know me?” she asked him softly. “You’ve very good reason to remember me, because you were annoyed with me on the night of the accident — ”

He stared straight up into her eyes.

“You’ve got red hair,” he murmured almost absent-mindedly, “and I suppose it’s very pretty hair. It appears to curl naturally.”

“It does curl naturally,” she agreed.

“You’re very pleasant to look at altogether, but I haven’t the foggiest idea who you are. Ought I to know you very well?”

“I’m Charlotte Woodford,” she said distinctly.

He closed his eyes.

“Sorry, Charlotte, but if you said you were Florence Nightingale I’d have to believe you! To the best of my knowledge I’ve never met Charlotte Woodford.”

Charlotte went downstairs and sought out Hannah with a very grave look on her face. Hannah was not so immediately alarmed as Charlotte was, and said she had heard of cases of this kind before. It was nothing to be really startled about that Richard Tremarth, having survived an appalling accident, should have forgotten who he was. It was simply a form of amnesia resulting from delayed concussion. He had probably received a blow on the head that was much worse than any of them had imagined, and he would probably be foggy about everything around him for a while at least.

Nevertheless, she wasted little time in telephoning the doctor, and the latter said he would be with them in about half an hour. He too took the news quite calmly, saying reassuringly that it was the sort of thing that often happened.

Charlotte, however, was seriously troubled. As she pointed out to Hannah he appeared to have forgotten everything ... and that in a matter of hours.

“Only this morning he knew me perfectly well,” she said. “He walked up the stairs under his own steam, recognised that the room we entered was my room, and was concerned because he felt he had no right to turn me out of it. Of course I told him it didn’t matter about it being my room, and he looked so relieved at the prospect of getting into bed. I’m sure he was normal at that time.”

“But since then he has had a long sleep.” Hannah went upstairs alone to see the invalid, and Charlotte had no opportunity to find out what transpired at the interview because the doctor arrived before she left the room again and he suggested, quite kindly, to Charlotte that it might be a good thing if she remained downstairs while he conducted a fresh examination of the patient.

“After all, he is only a very casual acquaintance, isn’t he?” he said, in the same kind and detached voice. “I mean, it’s upsetting enough for you to have your house turned into a temporary nursing-home, and you don’t want to be harrowed by all the medical details as well.” “Oh, but he’s an old friend — ” Charlotte protested.

The doctor’s eyebrows arched.

“I mean, I knew him years ago,” Charlotte explained.

The doctor smiled.

“In that case, he should remember you. But if you really mean years

ago then you must have been very young at the time.”

“I was only a child.”

Dr. Mackay shrugged.

“Then if there’s been a very long interval between your childish knowledge of one another and your present acquaintanceship he’s still not much more than a virtual stranger to you, is he?” he observed reasonably. And Charlotte realised that what he meant was that unless there was some particular reason why Tremarth should have her firmly imprinted on his mind she was no more likely to affect his present state and assist his return to a normal one than any of the other people around him

— including the doctor himself if it came to that.

Charlotte allowed him to go upstairs to the invalid with an odd feeling of resentment, nevertheless, and when he had departed and Hannah passed on to her the information that he was not seriously concerned about the patient’s lapse, and expected it might last for several days unless something happened to jog his shrouded memory, she could not refrain from arguing somewhat perversely that it did seem to her extraordinary that Richard wasn’t able to recall her.

“But why?” Hannah asked, studying her with rather more intentness than usual, as if she was suddenly intrigued.

Charlotte shrugged.

“Oh, I don’t honestly know why. Except that he was very annoyed with me recently, and when you’re annoyed with a person you're less apt to forget them than if they happened to be someone else,” she argued without very much conviction herself, However.

Hannah went on studying her with a certain unconcealed interest.

“Apart from that is there any very good reason why he should remember you?” she asked.

Charlotte appeared suddenly confused by the direct question, and actually developed a slight pink tinge in her cheeks while she denied the imputation emphatically.

“Oh, no, of course not! ... Why,” she added naively, “we don’t even like one another.”

“You mean you don’t like him?”

“Oh, I don’t dislike him at all!”

“But you think he was annoyed with you for good reason?”

“He wanted Tremarth...”

“Well, he must have wanted it very badly, for his subconscious took over and literally forced him into that crash the other night. If he wasn’t dwelling on you he was dwelling on Tremarth .. . and now it seems very likely that he’ll remain a patient here for weeks.”

“Oh, do you think so?”

“Well, perhaps not weeks. But it could be one or two weeks. Do you think you can afford to keep him all that length of time, and provide the various extras that will be necessary?” “Of course,” Charlotte replied, with a considerable amount of surprised emphasis this time. “Of course,” she repeated.

Hannah smiled somewhat curiously and turned away.

“Well, if you’ll forgive me,” she said, “I’ll go and have another look at him.”

Charlotte made a careful inspection of the contents of the kitchen and the larder, and by the time she was rejoined once more by her friend she had already drawn up a long list of essentials that would have to be obtained from the village store if the patient’s physical wellbeing was to be maintained. Hannah took the list from her and arched her eyebrows a little at the sight of such items as chicken in aspic and fresh strawberries if available, and she suggested that there were probably some strawberries in the garden if they went searching for them. And a more economical buy than chicken in aspic — which the

village store was hardly likely to have in stock — would be a couple of fresh chickens from the local butcher, which they could keep in the larder and turn into various things like soups and casseroles when the need arose.

“It might even be worth a trip into Truro,” she suggested, “if you really mean to stock up. I can’t see the importance of strawberries, but you’re bound to get them there if you really want them.”

Charlotte was immediately captivated by the idea, and then it occurred to her that this would mean leaving the patient. She looked anxiously at Hannah.

“We can’t do that, can we?”

“I can’t but you can,” Hannah replied, with the faintest of genuinely amused smiles. “I’m in charge, don’t forget. You’re free to do more or less what you like.”

Charlotte objected at once that they would have to take turn and turn about, and then it apparently struck her that she was putting forward a line of argument with which neither Dr. Mackay nor Hannah herself would be likely to agree. The most that she would be permitted to do was sit with the patient occasionally, and apart from that it was her job to look after the domestic side. She agreed after a hesitation of several seconds:

“Oh, all right, I’ll go into Truro tomorrow. You must make me a list of any medical requirements you’re likely to need, and I’ll make out a really comprehensive list of the things I think are needed.”

Hannah smiled at her more kindly.

“Don’t spend all your money,” she advised. “Remember he’s a rich man and can afford to be looked after, but you’re only a poor working girl.”

Charlotte said without having the least intention of doing anything of the kind:

“I can always present him with a bill when he leaves! ”

Hannah allowed her to have a peep at the patient before she went to bed — in another of the many bedrooms at Tremarth that she had hurriedly got ready for herself — and she found him lying with his eyes closed in a room that was illuminated very, very softly by a bedside lamp.

At first she thought that Richard Tremarth was asleep, and she was resisting an impulse to tiptoe to the side of bed to make sure when his eyes opened swiftly, and he turned his head sideways to regard her. “Oh, so it’s you! ” he said.

Her heart gave a quite extraordinary bound, and with a note of relief in her voice she exclaimed, “Oh, so you do remember me!” Richard Tremarth looked faintly bored, and then he began to look slightly puzzled. She was so obviously delighted because he seemed to know something about her.

“Well, I’ve seen you before, haven’t I?” he said. “You’re the redheaded young woman who calls herself Charlotte Something-or-other I’m afraid I don’t seem to have a very retentive memory at the moment, and I’ve forgotten what your surname is. But I’m sure you told me! ”

“Woodford,” she murmured, advancing very cautiously to the side of the bed. “Charlotte Woodford.”

“Ah, yes.” He lay looking up at her, and apart from the fact that they had a slightly abnormal look about them his eyes shone with very subdued humour. “You asked me whether I’d seen you before, and I had to tell you the absolute truth that to the best of my knowledge you’re an absolute stranger. That other young woman, too... I didn’t know her from Eve.” “She ... we’re friends,” Charlotte explained. He nodded, and winced very slightly because it obviously hurt his head.

“That’s what she said,” he said. “I must say I find her soothing and rather comforting. Is she a fully trained nurse?”

“She’s partially trained.”

“She struck me as being pretty competent. She told me I wasn’t to talk, and above all that I wasn’t to ask any questions ” His eyes left her face and roved in a puzzled way round the room. “I don’t know why,” he confessed, “but I’ve got a sort of impression that this is a woman’s room. It’s very tidy at the moment, but I seem to see it littered with feminine things.” “My things.” She spoke very, very softly, close beside him, and although Hannah might not have approved she could not resist adding: “This was my room.”

The puzzled look in his eyes worried her. He was so plainly trying hard to remember, and the effort of trying to recapture something of his past life seemed to hurt him almost as much as actually turning his head on the pillow.

“Yours? Then why don’t you turn me out?” “Because I’m perfectly happy for you to be here.... Because, as I tried to make you understand, you had an accident, and we put you to bed here.”

“But. .. ? Why your room... ?”

“You seemed to take a fancy to it.”

He frowned, shut his eyes tightly for rather a long moment, and then once again let them rove round the room.

“It’s a nice room, a very nice room. And I’ve a kind of impression the sea is outside — ”

“It is.”

“And I’ve been here before.”

“You have! ”

“When?” He looked directly up at her with very bright, clear eyes. “Tell me when! ”

“Oh, you’ve been here several times.”

He caught at her hand that was pressing lightly and coolly against his forehead, and he inhaled the perfume of her fingers with obvious pleasure.

“You smell nice,” he said. “Lavender and old lace ... lavender and hem-stitched pillowcases! Did someone make lavender bags in this house long ago?”

“My aunt did.”

“And did I know your aunt?”

Hannah put her head round the door, then came in very purposefully and frowned reprovingly at Charlotte where she stood in close proximity to the patient in the bed.

“I hope you’re not worrying him, Charlotte,” she whispered. “There’s lots of time for him to find out where and who he is, and tonight is not one of them....” She frowned still more as she saw the overbright eyes gazing up into Charlotte’s face as if he felt that it contained a secret. “Please say good-night and leave us,” she added urgently.