Unknown (4 page)

Doctor Neath eyed his patient shrewdly as they approached the bed and noted the gleam of pleasure at the sight of his companion and the wide smile that made the rather pale face look suddenly boyish. A flop of black hair fell over one eye and he brushed it back impatiently. 'Hello, doc, can I believe my eyes or have I dozed off and I'm dreaming?' Helen could not resist a smile at the exaggerated compliment, and his levity, obviously pleased the old doctor, for he chuckled as he put a hand on the broad forehead.

'Helen is to be your nurse,' he said. 'Nurse Gaynor to you; Helen, my dear, this is Emlyn Davies, your patient; I hope you can manage him, he's a bit of a handful when he's well enough, but at the moment he's not in full working order, a matter we hope to put right very soon.'

'I'm fine,' the young man protested, then added hastily, with a wicked twinkle at Helen, 'Though of course I shall need long and careful nursing to make me a hundred per cent.'

'You'll only be fine when we can get you on your feet again,' the doctor retorted, ‘and we can set about achieving that now that Helen is here and I have some professional assistance.'

The man in the bed sighed exaggeratedly. 'If Helen is going to nurse me,' he said, 'I shall stay here for ever.'

'You won't,' Doctor Neath threatened with his customary smile, 'because if you don't start showing improvement I shall send Helen away again and get in a nice elderly nurse like your father wants me to.'

'Oh, don't take any notice of Evan,' the young man retorted. 'I knew you wouldn't let me down, Doctor Neath, and you haven't.' The glinting dark eyes turned to Helen again. ‘She's gorgeous!'

'Now you behave yourself, Emlyn,' the old doctor warned, only half serious. 'Helen is a very old friend of mine and I won't have her made miserable by your misbehaving, so just you step out of line, my lad, and I'll see that you get that old dragon to nurse you.' He gave Helen a smile of encouragement. 'You're in a very powerful position, Helen, so if you have trouble with him don't hesitate to retaliate.'

Helen composed her features into a suitably threatening expression that boded ill for her irrepressible patient. ‘I won't,' she promised.

Emlyn Davies looked from one to the other of them, his face suddenly apprehensive, as if it had only now occurred to him what his treatment might involve. 'Is it going to be very painful, doc, is it going to hurt?' The anxiety in his eyes reminded Helen of a child fearful of some consequence over which he has no control, and she felt pity for him.

'It won't be too bad, if you co-operate,' she told him gently, before the doctor could reply. 'And it will be worth it to be up and around again, won't it?'

His smile was a brave attempt, but it was not the blithe one he had greeted them with and there was a trace of doubt in his voice. 'If you say so,' he told her, 'I'll have to put up with it, won't I?' The old doctor beamed his cheerful smile at him in encouragement.

'You'll be fine, Emlyn,' he assured him. 'Helen is a very good nurse and a very gentle one, I can promise you.'

'
I'm sure she is,' their patient said, already showing signs of his former cheerfulness, 'and she's a very pretty one too.'

The response seemed to please the old doctor and he glanced at his wristwatch with a smile of satisfaction.

'
Well, now that's settled to the satisfaction of all, I trust, I'll have another brief word with Evan and I'll be away.' He looked down at the young face, pale with such a long spell in bed, and there was a gentle concern in his eyes. 'It won't be long now, Emlyn,' he said quietly, 'and we'll have you up and about as good as new, you'll see.'

The black head turned to look at him, a momentary irony in his smile. '1 hope so, doc, I do hope so,' he said. There was a moment of silence and then the dark eyes turned to Helen again with the same sparkle of mischief as before. 'I’m sure Helen is going to be the best encouragement I’ve had yet.'

'Nurse Gaynor to you,' Doctor Neath warned him. 'And don’t forget, if you don’t treat her properly you’ll have to answer to me.' He patted the land that lay on the covers. 'Goodbye, Emlyn, I’ll see you again tomorrow ; I shall be coming in to see how Helen is faring.' He put an arm round her shoulders and hugged her briefly. 'Goodbye, Helen, I’m sure you’ll settle in all right, and don’t take too much notice of Evan. He won’t eat you, even if he does give 'the impression that he might! ’

He left them and, as the door closed behind him, Helen was left with the vague feeling that she had been deserted. Emlyn Davies was watching her from the bed and he smiled when she turned and looked at him, almost as if he guessed something of her feeling. 'You’ll be aril right,’ he assured her. 'Evan’s bark is much worse than his bite.' He grinned. 'And if it’s any consolation to you, so is mine.'

'I’m very glad to hear it,' she said, not knowing quite what she was expected to do now, since Evan Davies had said that she would not be required to start right away; she could go along to her> room, which Mrs Beeley had pointed out to her from the stairs earlier, and unpack and then try to work out some sort of a system for her duties. Any immediate plans she might have had, however, were not to be carried out, for her patient had other ideas. He called her across to him and, when she came within reach, caught one of her hands and held it.

'
I hope you’ll like it here, Helen,' he said, and the black brows cocked impudently. 'You don’t really want me to call you Nurse Gaynor, do you?’

'
As long as Mr Davies doesn’t object,' she said, knowing full well that he would if his initial behaviour was anything to judge by, and he laughed.

'This Mr Davies doesn’t,’ he told her. 'And I’m free, white and over twenty-one, so that’s all that matters, isn’t it?' His mention of being over twenty-one reminded her of her conversation with Owen Neath on the train and she must have shown some of her curiosity on her face without realizing it, for a moment later he tugged her hand gently to make her look at him again. ‘You're suffering from the usual curiosity,' he teased her, 'aren't you?'

'
I—I don't know what you mean, Mr Emlyn. I have nothing to be curious about, have I?' She met his eyes, but only with difficulty could she hold them long enough to deny that she was curious about his age and his father's.

'
Oh, don't worry about it,' he assured her cheerfully. 'Everyone gives us a funny look at first, but the answer is perfectly simple; Evan was only sixteen when I was born, but it was quite respectable; I was born in holy wedlock, as they say.' His laugh jarred on her, for it had the sound of one that had been used too often to explain away something that he refused to find embarrassing. ‘It's a silly phrase, isn't it, but people seem to find it a balm to respectability.'

'
It's really no concern of mine,' Helen told him, 'and I'm quite sure that Mr Davies wouldn't approve of you talking to me about such things, Mr Emlyn.'

‘Evan,' his son pronounced solemnly, ‘thinks that the sun rises and sets with me. I'm the apple of his eye, that's why I'm here at home instead of in that ghastly hospital ward where the nurses, I might add, are not nearly as pretty as you are.'

'You would probably be much better off in the hospital,' she told him firmly, freeing her hand with difficulty ; for a sick man his grip was amazingly strong and reminiscent of that brief but vice-like grip with which his father had acknowledged her earlier.

‘I wouldn't,' he denied. ‘I don't take kindly to discipline.' A fact which Helen found no difficulty in believing. 'Evan got me out of there,' he went on blithely. 'I had to sign forms and things and they let me come home—not that they liked doing it, mind you, but nobody argues with Evan for very long.' This she could believe, too, and she sighed inwardly at the thought of how much strong will and determination she was going to have to cope with from the Davies men during what could be a long and difficult time.

'You're lucky not to have been set back seriously,' she said. 'It wasn't a very wise thing to do, you know.'

He grinned at her, uncaringly. 'Oh, I'll be all right,' he assured her. 'Dear old Beeley has been coping for the past week until the doc produced you, and that's the best thing that's happened so far.'

Helen smiled wryly at the unqualified optimism. 'I hope you continue to think so,' she said. 'Now if there's nothing I can get for you, I'll go and unpack and freshen up. Mr Davies said I shouldn't start immediately, so presumably I'm free, for a while at any rate.'

'Oh, but you must start!' he protested. 'I'll tell him I want you to start right now.' He obviously meant what he said and again she sighed inwardly in self-pity at the prospect before her.

'Very well,' she conceded, not wanting Evan Davies brought into a disagreement so soon, 'I'll just go and change and settle myself in and I'll come back. You can summon assistance if you need it, I presume?'

He pointed to a row of bell-pushes within easy reach of his hand. 'I'm well supplied,' he told her. 'There's one to your room, one to the room downstairs, one to the garden lodge and one to Dai Hughes' room. Dai Hughes,' he explained, seeing her puzzled look, 'is one of the help. He's in the garden when I don't need him, and he's a sort of general factotum about the place. He's been doing the lifting when necessary, Doc Neath showed him how. I'm not exactly a dwarf and poor old Beeley couldn't cope.'

'I see.' She wondered how much else Doctor Neath had omitted to tell her.

'Dai's moved into the house for convenience,' he said, 'and there's no reason why he can't go on doing the heavy job. You don't look big enough to be heaving me around.'

'
I can do my job quite adequately,' she said stiffly, and he smiled.

'
I know you can,' he assured her, 'but you can’t lift me yourself and Dai is used to doing it, so we'll leave it as it is, shall we?' He grinned. 'Besides, I like having Dai around, he keeps me abreast of the village gossip.'

‘If he does no more than gossip I can quite well manage without him,' she said, but he would have none of it and she realized that although his body might have been injured, his will power was unimpaired.

'
I don't want to manage without him,' he said. '
I
like Dai, he's good fun.'

She looked at him steadily for a moment and the determination she saw in his eyes gave her no hope that he would be an amenable patient, so she eventually nodded agreement. 'Just as you like,' she conceded, 'as long as it doesn't impede your recovery.'

‘Oh, it won't do that,' he assured her, smiling at his victory as if he knew it had been inevitable. 'And with you here to help, I can't fail to be on my feet again in record time.'

Helen spent some time unpacking and settling in, and her mind was so filled with the prospect of the job before her that most of her actions were automatic. It seemed that her patient was far more of a social creature than Owen Neath had led her to believe, although she did remember that he had mentioned his reputation with the girls, and having sampled his manner, she could believe the reputation well founded. His obvious longing for company she had found almost childishly pathetic and she found it difficult to fit such a nature into the rather lonely and isolated surroundings of Glyntarrach.

She changed into her uniform and looked at her reflection in the long mirror. It was a long time since she had worn it and she was pleased to see that it still suited her, giving her a cool and very professional appearance that she lacked in normal clothes. When she presented herself to her patient, however, his reception was less encouraging.— He pulled a face and raised an immediate objection.

'
I don't like
that,'
he said bluntly. 'It reminds me of those dragons in the County Hospital. Why do you have to wear it?'

'
Because I'm a nurse,' she informed him shortly, annoyed at his rudeness. 'I worked very hard to earn the right to wear this uniform, Mr Emlyn, and I intend to wear it whether you like it or not.'

He blinked in surprised silence for a moment, but his recovery was quick and his dark eyes glinted a challenge at her. 'If I say I don't like you wearing a uniform then Evan will make sure that you don't wear it,' he told her, blandly self confident, 'so you may as well go and change, right now.'

‘I have no intention of changing,' she said firmly, her mind made up and her usually gentle mouth set in a straight line of determination. 'And I shall continue to wear this uniform when I'm on duty, so you may as well get used to it.'

'
I have no intention of getting used to it!’ he retorted, looking stubborn; his square chin thrust as aggressively as it could be for his position on his back and she wondered how long she could resist in the face of his insistence. 'You can either change now, or Evan will
make
you.’

‘No one will make me,’ she told him, her chin set as obstinately as his own. 'If anyone insists on my not wearing uniform, then I shall catch the next train back to Oxford. I have no binding contract here and I won’t be dictated to about the way I dress.' Her eloquence and determination surprised even her and it stunned her patient into a full minute’s silence.

‘You wouldn’t,’ he ventured, at last, his eyes watching her anxiously as if he would see just how far he could go without giving in, ‘Would you?’ Seeing victory in sight, Helen pressed home her advantage without compunction.

‘Indeed I would,’ she vowed, and hoped she had the strength of will to prove it, should it be necessary.

For a few moments he looked at her steadily and she could already feel her resolve weakening when he surrendered. 'Very well,’ he allowed grudgingly after a few moments. 'If it means you leaving, you can wear your silly uniform, but I still don't like it.’ She thought it diplomatic not to reply at once, but busied herself about the room while he watched her, obviously resenting her victory, however minor.

‘Did you treat your last patient like this?’ he demanded suddenly, determined not to give up completely, and Helen caught her breath at the question. It was too soon for her to take sudden reference to her father without the realization of his death being renewed each time. She kept her back to him and busied her fingers, trying to keep her voice steady when she answered.