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"I'm sorry if I startled you, Miss Leigh." Lesley jumped. She hadn't heard Sir Charles Hope-Moncrieff's approach.

"I'm afraid I was woolgathering." She blushed in sudden confusion at finding him here.

"I see you've discovered my favourite haunt." His smile was only polite.

"Larks' Hill," she said quickly to hide her embarrassment. This was the place she thought peculiarly her own. It gave her a queer feeling to realise that he knew it too.

"More like Heart's-ease Hillock." He stooped to pick one of the little purple flowers which grew all over this hillside. "They vary a lot from year to year. This summer they seem to be particularly prolific." He handed it to her. "You wouldn't dream we were so near to a main road here, would you?" He threw down his raincoat and lowered himself carefully on to it. "I'll no doubt need help to get up from this impossible position."

He settled the knee which wouldn't bend properly and cradled his arms round the good one. It was such a boyish gesture, Lesley was completely disarmed.

"You live near here, don't you?" she rushed into the gap.

"You can just see my house through the trees by the river. The old road goes right past it. Besides, it's only a short walk from here over the stile."

Lesley knew the grey stone mansion in its wild heath garden. "I used to come walking this way as a student. I've never approached it from Fenham before."

"Graham not with you today?" He was shading his eyes and looking over the valley.

"Jim? No. It's his turn to do Outpatients." She was surprised at the swift turn in the conversation. "Very noble of him - let me borrow his car. I had to leave it at the top of the first hill." She grinned.

"The other way is certainly much easier to negotiate."

"It's a positive switchback of a road. I had no idea."

"According to the old records the roadbuilders just made for the top of one hill and then looked for another in the general direction they wished to go." He pointed to the bun- shaped hillock opposite them. Sure enough the track went straight up its side.

"It doesn't seem much of an engineering feat." To Lesley this was the strangest of conversations. She had never before heard him talk about anything but work.

"I suppose it seemed like the best way to do it at the time. It was never used for stage coaches. The only travel along it was on horseback. Even at that, it was impossibly dangerous in rainy weather. Horses could stumble and sink in the mud. Farmers on these moors couldn't take their winter produce to market for months. And Glasgow was three days' journey away." There was a faraway look in his eyes. He saw her looking at him and laughed. "I can get the BMW up it in dry weather. In wet, I take the long way round by the main road. A far cry from smugglers hot-foot for the city, two brandy kegs slung across the saddle bow, or a kilderkin of gin unloaded from a French lugger lying off the coast at Troon." He said the last part in a sing-song voice almost as though it were a couplet from a rhyme. There was a rueful note in his laugh. "My brother and I always called it the smugglers' road - though I doubt if there ever were any along it."

A single heron flew lazily over the valley. Lesley had a sudden picture of a small boy scampering about on this moor with a brother, before terrorism and a landmine had robbed him of that old mobility.

"I suppose I must be getting back," she said reluctantly. "Visiting hour will soon be over. Mrs. Maconachie's next sample is due."

"Me, too." He moved suddenly. She was about to hold out her hand to help him when he half rolled, half jerked in what she saw must be a long-practised trick for getting himself back in the upright position. "I'll walk with you as far as your car," he said.

They turned their backs on the sun and began to make their way slowly downhill. Their shadows lengthened, mingled and separated again. The trout fishers had packed up. Two grouse rose in front of them and a boy who had probably never heard of Covenanters, nor of luggers off the coast at Troon, drove his herd for milking along the smugglers' road.

At the top of the hill, within sight of the MG, he said goodbye to her.

She halted the car at the junction where the trade rejoined the main road and looked back. He stood etched for a moment with the pylon against the sky. One arm was raised in farewell. Then he was gone.

She put her hand down to re-engage the gear and the little purple flower with the cream heart fluttered from her lapel to the floor. She lifted it gently and looked at it in the palm of her hand. After a moment she took the May and Baker diary from her handbag and opened it at the day's date - July the twenty-seventh. She inserted the flower between its pages.

Ten minutes later she parked the MG at the back of the medical staff block and entered her corridor by its open french window. She was just in the process of fumbling for her room key when a door ahead of her was slammed shut.

"Doctor Leigh!" Kate Ritchie, the technician in haematology, barred her way. "I just want to tell you what I think of you. I wouldn't have believed it possible if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes!"

"Me? Why? What have I done?" Lesley was drawn sharply back to the present by the woman's indignant tones.

"That notice on the bathroom door. I've seen some snobbish things in my day, but this takes the biscuit."

"I don't know what you're talking about." Lesley seemed to spend half her time here saying words like these to someone or other.

"Don't come it with me. There's no need to adopt that innocent air. I've met your sort before. The more education some of you get the worse it makes you." She rushed on without pausing to give Lesley a chance to reply. "There's no one else it could be but you. You'll be telling me next it was Nan Baillie, I suppose - as if she and I hadn't shared the same quarters for nearly a year. We never had any of this trouble till you came along. But that would be just what I'd expect from you - when you don't get away with it, try to put the blame on somebody else."

"But I didn't put the notice on the bathroom door."

"I don't want to discuss it any further. As far as we're concerned, you're welcome to your bathroom. Personally I wouldn't set foot in it now if you paid me. That goes for the others as well." She stood aside to let Lesley pass her. "I was inclined to think reports about you were exaggerated. Now I'm not so sure. No doubt Dr. Dayborough won't have his troubles to seek with you."

"Now, look here -" The warm glow of the afternoon had been shattered.

"No, you look here. Some of you youngsters think you can treat other people any way you please. One of these days you'll come up against someone who doesn't share your own optimistic view of your worth. Perhaps then you'll find out what it feels like to be hurt." It was quite a long speech, and Kate Ritchie had obviously wound herself up to deliver it.

"But I'm sorry, I had no idea." The other girl was clearly distressed.

"That's the trouble. Your sort never stops to think." She brushed past Lesley, went into her own room again and slammed the door.

Nan Baillie, who had evidently been listening, emerged now from her room. She laughed at the look on Lesley's face.

"They think it was you." She made it sound like the year's best joke. "I've been living with them for over six months. It never crossed their minds that it might have been me."

"But why didn't you tell them?" Lesley was astonished. "You put me in an awkward position just then. I couldn't very well tell her it was you."

"Be your age!" The head radiographer tinned the key in her lock. "It's everyone for herself in this place. You'll have to learn to look after yourself."

She disappeared into the outer corridor, and it dawned slowly on Lesley that the chuckle which yesterday had seemed rather infectious held a faintly derisive ring.

"I'm
dashed sure
I
wouldn't let him make a doormat of me." Sandy Williams went on placidly munching a slab of hospital fruit cake. "You've been letting him needle you for over a month now. If you ask me, it's high time the worm turned."

Lesley finished pouring her afternoon tea, then sank gratefully into the third armchair at the window table. It was Bank Holiday Saturday. What was traditionally a quiet weekend for the medical wards already bade fair to smash all known records for admissions. The day which had started out so hopefully had disintegrated into the usual shambles with Dayborough. She hadn't been able to hide from Sandy and Pete that, for the moment at least, she'd reached the end of her tether.

"He certainly never got away with it where I was concerned." Pete Morrison shifted one of his outstretched legs so that Lesley could get more room at the table.

"Perhaps he didn't try so hard. He didn't have the same incentive then. It's Sir Charles' new ruling about the roster that's eating him up. He's mad at having to stay on duty when his name's not even on the hospital's weekend list. He feels he should be out on the golf course, not 'wet-nursing' housemen as he so picturesquely puts it."

"Suitably embellished with adjectives, of course."

"Of course." Lesley took a watercress sandwich from the tea-trolley behind her.

"It's time someone took a firm line," said Sandy. "It's no use going the second mile with that sort - nor, for that matter, turning the other cheek. That's tantamount to inviting him to bulldoze right over you. Show him he's got the old immovable object up against his own irresistible force."

"Changed your mind about the stiff upper lip routine, not to mention the bit about group loyalty?" Lesley cocked an eyebrow at Sandy's earlier bluff.

"Oh, well, of course, if you're content just to moan about it," Sandy went into his aggrieved act, "you've only got yourself to blame if he walks all over you."

"I can't get used to this need for constantly being on guard against someone. It doesn't seem right. I was brought up to believe in essential goodwill."

"For heaven's sake!" Sandy put a hand to his head. "How vulnerable can you get?"

"This business of manipulating and manoeuvring people - just to prove to yourself that you're still on top - it's quite foreign to me."

"You've led a sheltered life, sweetie. A few brothers and sisters would have put you in the picture."

"It may be taking some time, but I'm gradually getting the hang of it." Lesley swallowed her first cup of tea and rose to pour out a second. "If he's trying to break my spirit, he's still got a long way to go. And if he supposes he's putting me off that senior house post he certainly has another think coming." Already the tea was doing her good.

"That's more like it." Sandy banged a fist on the arm of the chair, then pretended to wince as though he had hurt himself.

"It's a small price to pay for the chance to work with the Chief."

"For crying out loud - hero-worship!" Sandy groaned.

"No, Lesley's right." Pete nodded at Lesley's unspoken query with the teapot. "It would be worth putting up with a lot for that."

"Let me out of here," yelped Sandy. "The place positively reeks of incense!"

"Talking of idols, where is your
alter ego
today?" Pete grinned. "I haven't seen him since lunchtime. I thought he would be keeping the big bad wolf at bay."

"Jim?" Lesley placed his cup at his elbow. "Sir Charles took him to Greylands Nursing Home. One of his private patients needed a blood drip or something."

"I thought profs weren't allowed to have private patients," said Sandy.

"They're not permitted to take new ones, but they can go on treating those they already have."

"The beauty of this nursing home lark," said Pete, "is that you're likely to be tipped rather handsomely for it."

"Surely not."

"Yes." Pete hadn't been Sir Charles's resident for nothing. "Just when our chum's beginning to feel sorry for himself, cooped up with those old dears on a nice afternoon, His Lordship will probably slip him a fiver. Then he'll feel such a heel for griping about it in the first place."

"Now it's beginning to make sense," said Sandy. "All this complaining about being overworked while managing to give a good impression of ancestor worship. Wish old Brown would occasionally placate me like that. Catch him giving a resident a backhander. He takes our stooging as one of his hospital perks."

"Cynic," said Lesley.

"See what I mean?" He appealed to Pete. "Talk about
lese- majeste."

"You are a clot, Sandy. Now what are you doing?"

"Drinking a toast to the founder-members of the Sir Charles-mighty-wonderful-Moncrieff Club." He raised his tea-cup and drained it in one gulp.

"I must say he's being scrupulously fair about these extras," said Pete. "I thought he would keep them for the St. Kentigern crowd, but he seems determined to show that he's not discriminating between the staffs of his teaching and peripheral wards."

"Coming from the sublime to the ridiculous," Lesley turned to Sandy, "what are you doing here anyway, today? You're not on duty yet, are you? No, you can't be," she answered herself. "I've just examined a patient in one of your wards. I thought you, of all people, would be making hay while the sun shone."

"No such luck." Sandy grimaced. "Bad staff work, really. Got myself involved in arranging this jamboree tonight. Been ferrying cokes and sandwiches from the Crown and Anchor all afternoon. The speed of service in this village would daunt the most optimistic Government Commission set on hammering out an Incomes and Prices policy. Two speeds - dead slow and stop." He let out his long-suffering breath.

"I'd forgotten. It's the day you return the staff nurses' hospitality. That means there won't be one of them on duty tonight."

"Now who's being a kitten-cat?" wagged Sandy. "Actually it's a wine and cheese do." He adopted his lah-de-dah voice. "Less trouble and more sophisticated for the little dears, bless their hearts - with the cokes thrown in, of course, for the blokes like yourself who are still on duty."

"For the vote of confidence in my femininity, much thanks," bowed Lesley.

"Talking of staff nurses, I certainly hope your guardian angel is going to be back in time." Pete condescended to move his legs as the maid came over to remove the tea things'. 'I'm depending on him to keep Carol Bell off my back again. That sort who want to make all the running -" He shuddered.