The Little Doctor (11 page)

There was a movement behind them and Max came in.

“I thought I heard the clatter of teacups—and tongues! Jane!” he exclaimed when he recognized her, “how did you get here?”

“A tree blew down across the road,” Valerie supplied almost eagerly. “Jane can’t get back to Allingham. At least,” she amended, “it will be terribly late before they get the road clear.”

Max came toward Jane. It was almost as if he had not heard his wife’s explanation.

“You weren’t hurt?” he asked in a tense voice. “Your car isn’t outside—”

Jane looked away from something in his eyes she couldn’t understand.

“The tree must have blown down just before I got there, and I saw it in time,” she said. “I left my car in the market place and came down to the police station to report the road block.”

“Convince Jane that she can’t possibly stay at the Fleece, Max,” Valerie insisted. “I’ve told her we’ve oceans of room at Marton Heights.”

For a fraction of a second Max hesitated.

“Why not, Jane?” he asked at last. “You can drive back in the morning in time for your clinic, wherever it is.”

“It’s most terribly kind of you—”

Jane knew that she was committed now. She could not refuse to go to Marton Heights in the circumstances, for what possible excuse could she o
ff
er? There was no reason why she should not accept Max’s hospitality when they had been friends during their student days. Valerie knew that.

“We’ll go on ahead,” she suggested. “Then you can follow in time for dinner, Max. I’ll give Jane the gray room and she can borrow one of my nighties. Don’t even think of going back, Jane. You can get up early in the morning and the road will be nice and clear. It can’t be far to your first clinic.”

Her eagerness was extremely flattering, but Valerie was like that. Impulsive, and more than ready to share in any adventure that might be going, she was like quicksilver. Cheerful one minute, sombre the next, her moods rarely lasted for very long, yet underneath it all Jane detected a restlessness that had nothing to do with discontent. It was as if Valerie were eternally goaded by some dark impulse to live life to the full in the shortest possible time.

There were people like that. Sometimes they found their way into a doctor’s consulting room, while others broke records on water or in the air. There was the racing motorist of international fame and the test pilot, and there was also the foolish youth who would risk his life for a “dare.”

Valerie belonged to neither of these groups. The compulsion that urged her on was not wholly clear to Jane. She had so much. Surely she had everything she could possibly want?

When they reached Marton Heights, driving in Jane’s car, she felt more sure of that than ever. On this blustery, dark November evening, with the harsh rain slanting down between the boles of the trees, the house had a warm and sheltering look. It was a place anyone would have been more than proud to own, but Valerie seemed to take so many things for granted.

She swept into the hall ahead of Ja
n
e, spreading slender hands out to the warmth of the huge log fire that burned in the grate.

“If you feel grubby, Jane, Agnes will draw you a bath,” she offered. “But get thawed out first. I always feel that I need an extra scrub when I’ve been down at the surgery,” she added. “I can almost see the germs crawling toward me.”

They went up the staircase together, Jane on the outside.

“Why not let Max fence these in?” she asked. “They’re a positive death-trap, Valerie, and after your fall—”

“Oh, that!” Valerie had reached the stair above her. “I often have these silly dizzy spells. Max says they’re nothing to worry about.” She turned to gaze; down at Jane. “I haven’t thanked you properly for being there at the right moment when I fell,” she added.

“It’s fortunate someone was,” Jane said lightly. “It could have been quite serious.”

“Now don’t you start!” The flippant edge was in her voice again. “I’m not going to die falling downstairs!”

The words were light and idle enough, but they were to strike an oddly reverberating cord in Jane’s mind long afterwards. She dismissed them now with a slow smile, following Valerie along a broad corridor where doors stood ajar on either side, leading to the rooms on the first floor.

“You can have Max’s bathroom,” Valerie told her. “It’s next to the gray room and more convenient than mine. I don’t like to be facing east in the early morning, so I’m at the other side of the house. Max invariably wakens early, anyway, so it doesn’t much matter to him.”

She found Jane a large bathtowel—black reversed with yellow. There was yellow everywhere at Marton Heights, Jane reflected. Valerie’s color. It predominated even here, where Max began and ended his day.

Undressing leisurely, she enjoyed her bath, only remembering after half an hour that Max might be waiting for his. But there was no sound from the adjoining bedroom when she finally tiptoed across the golden-carpeted corridor to the door Valerie had left open for her.

The gray room belied its name. It was really silver-and-gold: the silver of the young birch and the gold of early morning sunlight. Valerie certainly knew how to surround herself with beauty, and in such an environment there was no reason why Max should be unhappy.

Why had she used that word? She had no reason to believe that Max was unhappy. His very anxiety for Valerie proved that, didn’t it?

It was foolish to think of such things, she told herself—to probe and question and wonder when everything was really quite clear. Max was as much in love with Valerie now as he had ever been, and if she were thinking in terms of happiness or unhappiness where he was concerned, she ought not to be here, under his roof. To
imagine
Max unhappy was walking hand-in-hand with danger.

He came down to
d
inner half an hour after she did, and they drank their sherries .in the big room facing the garden and the hills. The roses had long since withered and the rain trickled in sad little rivulets down the window panes and across the terrace steps.

“What a night!” he said. “I’m glad you’re not on your way back to Allingham.
”

“I believe I am, too,” Jane confessed. “This is so much nicer—”

Confused, she hesitated in mid-sentence. She had been going to say that it was all so much nicer than returning to an empty flat. Neither Valerie nor Max seemed to notice, however, and during the meal Valerie put herself out to be entertaining. Max still wore a rather grim expression. His eyes were slightly forbidding and a little watchful, which seemed to make Valerie uneasy.

They sat up fairly late, talking about Scotland and the many holidays they had all enjoyed there.

“Where will you go next year?” Valerie asked Jane lazily. “Back to Scotland?”

“I haven’t taken all this year’s leave yet,” Jane remembered and with the confession she also remembered Nicholas, who wanted to marry her, who expected her answer by Christmas. “I really ought to decide,” she murmured, knowing that she was not only thinking about her accumulated holidays but about the future as well.

“Why don’t you go abroad?” Valerie asked. “I’ve been pestering Max to take me to St. Moritz for the winter sports, but he makes all sorts of excuses. Max,”—she turned to her husband—“you could get someone in to look after the practice, you know! We could go quite easily. You almost promised, remember?”

Max got swiftly to his feet.

“I’m no expert on skis,” he said harshly and unexpectedly.

“You could practise—brush up your technique,” Valerie encouraged, her cheeks flushing. “You might become an expert in time, Maxie!”

“Not at my age.”

“There speaks Methuselah!” Half-flippant, half-angry, Valerie stretched on the yellow velvet settee. “Max! you’re losing all the joy of life. You’re going to be an old, old man before you’re thirty!”

“You’re not giving me much time.” Max tried to make his voice sound light as
h
e crossed to the cocktail cabinet to pour them a nightcap. “Only another year!”

Suddenly Valerie’s face was ashen-pale.

“So much can happen in a year,” she said in a strange, faraway voice that had almost the inflection of prophecy in it.

“Don’t let’s talk about passing time,
”
Jane said briskly. “I’ve got so much to do before I even think about taking a holiday.”

“Isn’t that rather foolish?” Max was standing in front of her with her glass in his hand. “You need a rest, Jane.

Her fatigue showed. Nicholas had already remarked on it, but somehow, coming from Max, it cut deeper. There had been vague concern in his voice, the friendly concern of the observant colleague who could see ahead to the likely breakdown. He had looked at her in that way, not with the eyes of a lover, as he had looked at Valerie.

But this was madness, thinking this way. Valerie was his wife. She should never have come here, she told herself. She should never have given in to Valerie’s whim.

“Would you mind very much if I went off to bed?” she asked. “I must be up early in the morning, and I’m rather tired.”

“I think we all ought to go,
”
Max agreed, but he lingered in the hall when they went upstairs, pacing to and fro to smoke a final cigarette before he locked up for the night.

Valerie said goodnight to Jane rather abruptly.

“Come along and see me in the morning before you go,” she commanded. “I don’t promise to be up, but I will be awake.
”

Jane must have dozed off to sleep almost immediately. She had not heard Max come up to his room, and it must have been well after midnight when she struggled back into consciousness, aware of a small, persistent sound which, for a moment, she imagined must be there in the room beside her.

Listening, she realized that it came from farther away, across the corridor, in fact, from behind the closed door of Max’s bedroom. The sound of weeping. Desperate, uncontrollable, childish weeping. In the quiet of the night it seemed to fill all the house, every nook and cranny, and soon it was filling Jane’s mind with a terrible sense of foreboding. Nothing could be done to stem this weeping. It went on and on, reaching out to fill the whole world. Nothing could prevail against it.

Presently she heard Max’s voice, low, grave, comforting, and then there was silence. A silence so profound that Jane could almost feel it in the darkness, like a living thing.

CHAPTER
SIX

The n
ext morning, unexpectedly, Valerie came down to breakfast. She had wrapped herself in a yellow velvet housecoat with white swan
s
down at the throat and cuffs, and she was starry-eyed.

“What do you think, Jane?” she exclaimed. “Max has agreed about Switzerland! We’re going—we’re actually going for Christmas!”

If she had said Max had “given in,
”
it would have been nearer the point. Capitulation was written all over his face.

“I’m so utterly happy!” Valerie rejoiced. “It will be something to plan for. My old ski things just won’t do. I must get hold of some catalogues. Jane, don’t you wish you were coming with us?”

“Of course.”

Jane’s voice sounded frozen. She could not look in Max’s direction because she knew he had given in against his better judgment. He did not want to go to Switzerland, and he did not want Valerie to go.

Abruptly she rose from the table.

“If you’ll excuse me, I must be on my way,” she said. “It’s after eight and I must be at Appleton Meirsk before ten.”

“Always providing the road is open,” Max said, accompanying her to the door. “
I’ll
phone the police and see what’s happened during the night.”

Their part of the line had not been affected by the storm and they had not been cut off. When Max got through, he heard that the road had been cleared shortly after midnight and was now open to traffic both ways.

The rain had stopped and the sky was clear. All the hills looked newly washed and very near. Jane said goodbye to Max at the gate.

“Have a nice holiday,” she tried to say lightly. “I think you deserve it.” Then, suddenly, all the pretence died out of her voice as she added: “Don’t worry about the practice, Max. If you can’t get a suitable locum, I’ll take over for a couple of weeks.”

“I couldn’t allow you to do that,” he said almost brusquely.

“Even if I promised not to dispose of all your best patients while you’re away? She had to force herself to the foolish little joke.

“I don’t think I would worry too much about the practice,” he said. “You’re a capable practitioner, Jane.”

“Thank you, Doctor! She gave him a brief smile. “But I do really mean it. If you need help, Max—I’m here.”

He let her go without answering, neither rejecting nor accepting the help she had offered so impulsively, and it was another three weeks before Jane saw him again.