The Other Linding Girl (14 page)

Not since that scene with Fiona in the study had she had a word with him. And, although he came once to the house to see his sister and Paula, it so happened—or perhaps that was his intention—that he chose a time when Rachel was at the Nursing Home.

If only she could have seen him for just ten minutes! At least she would have discovered if he meant to ignore that scene in the study—or attempt to explain it. As it was, she kept on going over the scene in her own mind, until the details were very slightly obscured—like a letter that has been re-read and handled until the outlines are faint and the meaning confused.

At times she even found herself wondering if she had imagined the angry ardour of his kiss, and whether, in fact, he had intended it as no more than the casual caress she had tried so hard to make Fiona believe.

Only if she saw him and spoke to him could she renew and clarify her impressions. And if he stayed away, how was she to do that?

And then, from the most unexpected quarter, the opportunity came. It was Fiona of all people who provided it.

She came into the study early one afternoon with a letter in her hand and said,

“Rachel—” with an air of synthetic friendliness, she had now taken to using Rachel’s Christian name—“I wish you’d take this and deliver it by hand for me. There’s simply no one else to send at the

moment, and it’s urgent.”

“Why, of course, Miss McGrath.” The Christian name arrangement was one-sided only. “Where is it to go?”

She got up and held out her hand for the letter.

“It’s for Nigel.” (Was she watching specially closely as she said that?) “My brother wants him to have it today. Something to do with a proposition he has to make,” she added, with quite uncharacteristic vagueness. “If you go now, you will catch him. He is always at his laboratory at this time in the day.”

Rachel took the envelope and looked down at the address.

It was in one of the inner suburbs. Not at all a fashionable address, and not a district Rachel knew. But Fiona was explaining lightly— like one who had been there in person.

“It’s quite a pokey sort of place, I’m afraid—poor Nigel! Attached to one of those out-of-date, dreary hospitals that one finds in the suburbs. You’d better take a taxi. I imagine it’s a dreadful journey by bus or tube.”

So Rachel took a taxi. And sat with her hands clasped tightly together, wondering why Fiona had sent her on this errand—and just what Nigel would say when she got there.

She was set down finally at the side entrance to a forbidding looking building in a long, featureless sort of road in North London. But the old man at the enquiry desk answered her query with cheerful good-humour.

“Mr. Seton, miss? You’ll have to walk quite a way to find him. Let me show you. You go through the OutPatients and out of that far door and through the covered way. Then cross the yard and you’ll find a couple of huts, as you might say. That’s where Mr. Seton is working, bless him! ”

“Why do you say that?” Rachel smiled.

“Just a manner of speaking, miss. But he deserves it more than most. He’s the finest man in this hospital, believe me.”

“Is he really?” She was fascinated by this view of Nigel, and could not resist lingering further. “Do you mean that he’s so clever?”

“That too they do say—the ones that know, I mean. I wouldn’t know about that myself. But he’s a fine chap in other ways too. Always ready to help when anyone’s in trouble. And I don’t mean only putting his hand in his pocket. He gives his time and himself, and there aren't many that do that. Friend of yours, miss?”

“Yes, I like to think so,” said Rachel, and smiled again. And she went on her way, strangely warmed by the old man’s words, and the fact that she had ventured to identify herself as a friend of Nigel’s.

She found her way quite easily. But, as she crossed the damp paved yard, she could not help contrasting the depressing scene with the life of the gilded playboy which her uncle insisted on thinking Nigel lived.

Finally she arrived at a white-painted door, with a notice which said, “Enquiries. Knock before-entering.” So she knocked and waited, and presently the door was opened by a bright-faced young man in a white coat who said,

“You’ve
been long enough, I must say!—Oh, sorry! I thought you were someone else. What can I do for you?”

“Could I see Mr. Seton, please? My name is Miss Linding, and I have a message from Miss McGrath.”

“Well, I don’t know. Come in and I’ll see.”

He admitted Rachel first to a tiny ante-room—hardly more than a large porch—and then to a long, cold room, with a large sink at one end, tables along one side, and a rich assortment of bottles, jars, test-tubes and chemical apparatus occupying most of the rest of the space.

Here another man and a young woman were working. “Sit down,” said the one who had admitted her, and he cleared a chair of a pile of files, by the simple expedient of putting them on the floor. “I’ll see if the Chief is available.” And, he went away, out of a further door

which, so

far as Rachel could see, led across more damp yard to another shed, While he was gone, she sat looking round. It was all very simple— almost primitive. Not at all the setting in which one would expect a world-shaking discovery to be made. Good work, she knew, of course, was not dependent on the profusion of up-to-date equipment. But this was so ordinary, somehow—so skimped. If one really imagined what a laboratory
could
look like—

And then the young man came back. And with him came Nigel— strangely unfamiliar in his white coat.

“Rachel—” whatever his inner thoughts might be, he was unfeignedly glad to see her—“what brings you here?”

She produced the letter, and explained, about Fiona’s having wished her to bring it personally. And, as he took it from her, she

noticed that he narrowed his eyes slightly.

“Why was there such a hurry?”

“I understand—” Rachel chose her words carefully— “that it’s some form of proposition from Mr. McGrath.” He said no more, but put his thumb under the flap of the envelope. Then, as though almost deliberately postponing the reading of the letter, he said,

“You’ve met Jerry Hallby, haven’t you?” He gestured in the direction of the young man who had first received Rachel. “He is my principal assistant. Would you like to show Miss Linding round, Jerry?”

It seemed that Jerry would. Or else he knew that he was to interpret this as a sign to leave Nigel on his own for a few minutes.

“Come and see our smarter lab,” the young man invited Rachel cordially. “This isn’t much of a place, I’m afraid.” And he conducted her through the door and across the yard to the other hut.

Here, it was true, matters were a little better. There was no a small, not very comfortable office, with shelves of files stacked and labelled with impeccable orderliness. And there was a slightly newer, better equipped laboratory, with some elaborate-looking equipment, which Nigel’s assistant began to explain with almost loving enthusiasm.

It was doubtful if Rachel would have followed much of the explanation in any circumstances. But, with her thoughts on Nigel and the letter she had brought, it was difficult to manage even “Yes” and “No”, “Really?” and “How interesting”, at the right moments.

And suddenly she cut across the technical explanations with something much more personal “Nigel is very good at his work, isn’t he?” she said, almost abruptly.

“Good
at it? He’s the best man in the country, in his own particular line,” replied Jerry, with unblushing partisanship.

“Then isn’t it very—very frustrating for him, and all of you, to be working in these cramped quarters?”

“Well, yes, it is,” her companion agreed, ruffling up his already untidy hair in an absent-minded gesture. “Except that I’d rather work here with Seton than with anyone else in the best equipped place in the world. It isn’t equipment that inspires one.”

“No, I’m sure you’re right,” Rachel agreed warmly. “But—” she looked round—“wouldn’t it make an enormous difference if you did have a well-equipped place?”

“Well, of course, Miss Linding,” Jerry Hallby laughed. “All the difference in the world. This is rather like an artist having to use cheap brushes, or a sculptor blunt tools. But—” he shrugged good-humouredly—“we do the best we can, and hope for a real break one day. I’m an optimist, you know.” And he grinned.

“Is—Nigel an optimist too?” Rachel could not help asking.

Nigel’s assistant frowned unexpectedly at that.

“By nature—yes, he is. But I’ve thought sometimes lately, that things have been getting him down. Why do you ask that?” He glanced sharply at Rachel.

“I don’t know. Except that—I like him. He’s related to me in a remote sort of way, and of course I’m interested in his work. I wish— I do wish that you could all have that lucky break you speak of.”

“So do I, Miss Linding.” Her companion sighed unexpectedly. “Not so much for the rest of us. We’re good run-of-the-mill assistants—” he was quite realistic about that—“and we’d all do anything for the Chief. But, as with all research work, results here depend on endless experimenting, checking and re-checking. There are short cuts, of course, if one has the means, but time is always against one, and the way we work is pretty heartbreaking at times.”

“Don’t you get any sort of grant?” She had asked Nigel that question before, of course, but she hoped for a more specific answer from his assistant.

“A small one.” The young man spoke without rancour. “But our job is a Cinderella one in many ways. It’s money down the drain to most people, until you get the results. But we’ll get somewhere some day,” he declared, with a return to what was obviously his normal degree of cheerfulness. “The darkest hour is always before dawn, you know, and all that sort of thing. Perhaps one of us will win the Pools, or marry an heiress, or strike oil in the back garden. You never know.” And he laughed.

“No,” Rachel agreed, “you never know.”

And, looking round once more, she thought she knew why the clever Miss McGrath had sent her here personally. She wanted Rachel to see for herself just how much it would mean to Nigel to have really substantial backing.

“Well, that’s about the lot,” Jerry Hallby was saying. “Not much of a display, I’m afraid, but we manage to do quite a lot of work with it.”

And then Nigel came in, looking preoccupied, but with an air of suppressed excitement about him which had brought a dash of colour to his cheeks.

“Thanks, Jerry. I won’t keep you any longer ” The words were not so much a dismissal as a hint between people who liked and understood each other completely.

The young assistant smiled at Rachel and took his leave, and she was alone with Nigel for the first time since he had kissed her in Fiona McGrath’s study. Somehow, that occasion seemed impossibly remote now, as she stood there, backed by a sink and other chill and uninteresting articles, And, as he paced slowly up the room and back again, she watched him in a silence which, she realised, had become apprehensive.

Finally he came to a stop, some distance away from her and, looking across at her, he said slowly,

“Do
you know what is in this letter?”

“No.” She moistened her lips nervously.

“Then I’d better tell you. It's an offer from Martin McGrath to put twenty thousand pounds at my disposal, for experimental work in whatever direction I think best. ”

The silence hung between them—chill and almost tangible. “From—from
Martin
McGrath?” she said at last, with faint emphasis on the first name.

“Ostensibly, yes. But the acceptance of it would put one under a deep obligation to both, of course.”

“Yes—of course,” agreed Rachel. And she looked away through the window, so as not to meet his eyes. Instead, she could see Jerry Hallby, framed in the window of the other hut, working away cheerfully, while he waited— while they all waited, Rachel felt— for that lucky break which was to turn up one day.

CHAPTER VI

It seemed to Rachel that there was a very long pause before she found the resolution to ask,

“What are you going to do about it, Nigel? Will you— accept this offer from the McGraths?”

She coupled them together openly in that sentence, and he did not question it. He merely said stonily, “I don’t know.” And then, as though the words were dragged out of him—“It’s the sort of offer every research worker dreams of, of course.”

“Yes.” agreed Rachel. “Only just now your nice assistant, Jerry Hallby, was telling me you all hoped that one day one of you might win the Pools, or strike oil—or marry an heiress.”

The third alternative—so jokingly listed by Jerry—seemed to hang in the air between them like something tangible. Then she managed to say, quite composedly, “You’ll have to think it over, Nigel—with all its implications. How long have you got to consider it?”

“No time limit is set. I suppose I could—invent a reason for some delay.” Neither of them said anything about
why
he should do any such thing. Instead, he suddenly caught her by the arm, and turned her so that she had to face him.

“What do
you
think I should do?” he asked, almost fiercely.