My Surgeon Neighbour Page 10

  “Her—? She meant Mr. Mansbury, I suppose?” said Sarah, dry-lipped.

  “I suppose so. Anyway, I showed her out after that, and we shan’t meet again by either her choice or mine. But be careful in future, won’t you, Sarah dear? Don’t drop Carrage if you value his friendship. You’re entitled to your own life, goodness knows. But don’t risk anything that brand of evil tongue could misconstrue. Promise me?”

  “I promise. You’re so good to me, Dick,” she told him warmly, and was not to know then how circumstance was to break that promise for her.

  The occasion was the end of Tony’s short stay at Greystones, when Oliver Mansbury prescribed a seaside holiday to hasten his convalescence and his father accordingly told Sarah that, as he himself couldn’t get away, he was arranging for the boy to spend a fortnight in the charge of a trained nurse at Python Bay, Fareborough’s nearest resort.

  So, after a night or two back at Monckton, Tony was duly despatched and thereafter sent back a stream of picture postcards, one arriving every day and variously for Sarah, Alice, Martha, each of the children in the residence and even for Martha’s cat, Moses. And then, within three days of his expected return, his father was on the telephone to Sarah.

  “I’m in trouble,” he said. “About Tony. His nurse has just rung to say that her mother has died suddenly; her father is abroad on business and she must go home to cope. Well, obviously I can’t quarrel with letting her go, but equally obviously I can’t leave Tony at Python alone and so far I haven’t been able to get another nurse for him. I still can’t go myself; I’m doing ‘locum’ for Berrider until the weekend, and I was wondering—”

  “Whether we could do anything from this end?” put in Sarah.

  She felt that he had smiled in spite of his dilemma. “Well, yes,” he admitted. “If you or Alice could—”

  Sarah thought quickly, then offered, “I’ll go myself. Can his nurse wait over until I get there?”

  “Yes. She’s a Scot from Edinburgh and needn’t travel until the night train North.”

  “That’s good. I gather you’d like me to go down and pack for him and bring him back here? Is that it?”

  “Roughly, yes, except that that’s going to cut short his stay, and as he tells me he has entered a spaceship design in the children’s sand competitions on Saturday, he’s going to be sadly disappointed if he is hauled away at short notice. But it can’t be helped unless, that is, Sarah—” some weeks earlier they had come easily to Christian name terms—“unless you could see your way to making a busman’s holiday of it at my expense by occupying Nurse Cameron’s room until Saturday and bringing Tony back as per plan?”

  “Oh! Three days and nights away, I don’t know that I can.” But Sarah wavered long enough for him to urge that surely Alice and Martha could hold the fort for so long without her, and on his promise that he would look in every day to see that all was well, she agreed to join Tony by the first available train.

  Tony, brown, and looking bonnier than before his operation, was gravely pleased to see her; they were lucky in their weather and while he read or painstakingly revised his space-ship plans or solemnly pedalled a hired tricycle along the sands, Sarah spent the hours sunbathing and allowing herself the dreaming of dreams of what might have been if it could have been she, not Jurice Grey, who, on some unidentified beach, had been snapshot-caught, laughing confidently up into Oliver Mansbury’s eyes.

  She had time too to look at the pitfalls implicit in her determination to stay on at Monckton, with, through no fault of her own, a doubled hostility next door. She hadn’t an idea of how or why she had aroused such malice in Jurice Grey as Dick had reported. Their personal encounters had been as brief as any she had ever had; a hundred or so words exchanged at most, and it was impossible that Jurice could have guessed at, or been embarrassed by her, Sarah’s, eavesdropping on that bitter little scene at the Tennis club. Yet it looked as if the uneasy situation created by Jurice’s antipathy might endure until—until she married Oliver Mansbury, when presumably he would leave his bachelor quarters at Greystones for some other home which he and Jurice would make together.

  Whenever Sarah’s thoughts took those lines it was as if a cloud were suddenly chilling the sun. But the actual sun shone on through Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, and Friday evening brought a welcome surprise for Tony.

  Both happily tired, they were returning to their hotel at sundown when Tony stopped, pointing at the back of a man standing at the reception desk. “That’s Daddy,” he said.

  “No—”

  But it was Steven Carrage. At the moment he turned and at once was fending off Tony’s swoop at him and holding out a hand to Sarah.

  He explained that he was free by reason of Dr. Berrider’s return a day early and of his agreeing to ‘locum’ for twenty-four hours in his turn, to enable Steven to drive down to the coast and to take Tony and Sarah back the next day.

  “So I phoned for a room for tonight and hared down. And my!” he held Tony off at arm’s length. “You’re looking pretty fighting fit, son, I will say!”

  “Yes, isn’t he?” agreed Sarah. “But it’s such a lovely evening that I’m afraid we’ve over-run bedtime by a good deal,” she added, looking at the foyer clock.

  However, she yielded to Steven’s pleading for a quarter of an hour’s grace and the ‘nightcap’ of an ice cream for Tony. Then she saw Tony to bed, and when Steven himself came down from saying goodnight to the boy he told her he had asked the floor-maid to look in on him once or twice later, enabling himself and Sarah to go out somewhere for dinner and perhaps a film.

  On her guard, Sarah demurred, “Oh, but I’ve been dining in every night. They put on a very good meal here.”

  “So they may. All the same,” said Steven, “I hope you’ll let me take you out; we needn’t be late back. So go and change if you want to and we’ll meet in the bar in, say, an hour from now?”

  She could not refuse without appearing to snub him and as she changed Sarah looked at the risk of scandal which she had promised Dick to avoid, saw how small it was and resolved to take it. ‘Evil to him who evil thinks’ in fact; she knew her relationship to be innocent, and even Dick had urged her to keep Steven Carrage as a friend.

  From the bar Steven had ordered a taxi to take them to one of the best hotels on the Front, but before it had arrived they agreed to go out into the warm blue evening to wait for it on their own hotel steps. On the way Steven gave in his room-key at the porter’s desk, then his hand went protectively to Sarah’s elbow and they went out together; stood for a few minutes beyond the revolving doors, then took their taxi and were away.

  A small risk indeed. But enough for Fate’s wry sport with Sarah. For from the open gateway of a just descended lift the whole small innocent scene had had a witness who was to take infinite pleasure in turning it into guilt.

  Jurice, provocative in a plunge-line white evening sweater and matching pants as revealing as a second skin, balanced on the arm of a chair and swung a graceful foot in the direction of Oliver across the room.

  “I tell you, I saw them with my own eyes,” she reiterated. “I must say, they could hardly have chosen a better hide-out, even though you’d think they’d go further afield than Python. I mean, the Miramar is only a one-horse place, and I should never have been there myself if, as I’ve told you, it hadn’t been the only hotel I could get into, after those wretched tenants for the bungalow had never turned up.”

  “And as I’ve told you,” put in Oliver coldly, “I happen to know that on my advice Carrage sent his boy down to Python to convalesce, which could surely account for both his and Sarah Sanstead’s being there too?”

  Jurice shrugged. “Carrage, yes. But why should she be? And they certainly had no small boy along.”

  “Well, would they, at that time in the evening? Anyway, what did you see of them? Their crossing the foyer and going out of the hotel together!”

  “And dropping their room-key on the way! One key—ju
st one.”

  “A fact which, you feel, entitles you to continue as a self-appointed guardian of our neighbor’s morals? And ‘continue’ is the operative word, because you began doing it quite some time ago, and apparently haven’t heeded my warning as to where it might lead you, have you?” Oliver enquired.

  Jurice suddenly raged, “Self-appointed guardian! I like that! As if I could care less what the silly wench does to tear her reputation or Carrage’s to shreds! Let the parents of her patients and the B.M.A. get wind of how they’re carrying on, and they’ll deserve what’s coming to them, say I. But I’ve told you, it’s for you, for you and Kate, that I’m bothered, even if you aren’t. Don’t you really care that besides getting Carrage and young Finder and probably other men we don’t know about, she can flatter herself that she has you lined up too? That she has only to lay on someone’s little finger ache, real or imaginary, and you’ll come running? Or maybe you consider that being engaged to me protects you from anything people may say or think; that it acts as a kind of invisible cloak guarding you against the designs she has on you? Well, I warn you, Oliver, you can’t use me like that!”

  Beside herself, she did not notice how steely were Oliver’s eyes as he said, cold emphasis on every word, “Forget it, Jurice. I’ve been called next door just twice, both times on clinical emergencies I couldn’t ignore. And I am not using you, as you call it. Nor am I using the name of any engagement between us, for a reason you know very well.”

  “Oh yes! Yes, of course!” Jurice flung up her chin. “The reason being that you’re still hedging on it. But who, if not you, led me on to think that you put all that silly business of a couple of years ago behind you and that you were willing to try again?”

  Oliver shook his head. “I’m sorry if this hurts, Jurice, but you must understand I never had any intention of trying again.”

  “But you encouraged me! You let me come, allowed me to stay!”

  “You came as Kate’s guest, not mine,” he pointed out.

  “You welcomed me. You seemed glad enough to see me when I arrived.”

  He sighed. “Let’s say I was—intrigued when you arrived. After a break-up like ours, everything doesn’t die at a touch and I suppose I was curious to find out what it was that made you willing to see me again. Curious as to my own reactions too. If either of us had changed, I thought, we might perhaps build something out of the ruins. But I’ve learned since that neither of us has changed; there’s nothing we can build together, and I don’t think I’ve ever let you suppose otherwise during the time you have been here.”

  Jurice sneered, “You’ve got something there, I admit. You’ve certainly bent over backwards to snub me and humiliate me whenever you can. And what sort of a heel do you suppose that makes you look to people who think we’re about to team up again?”

  “No one round here can possibly think that!”

  “Oh can’t they? What about most of Kate’s patients? She says they smelt out our romance almost as soon as I arrived, and only yesterday I overheard her ‘explaining’ me to that new woman—what’s her name?—Mrs. de Courcy, as your fiancée-to-be, and the de Courcy crooning about a ‘lovely couple’, if ever she saw one, etc. etc.”

  Oliver’s jaw set. “Indeed? And how long has Kate been putting about such a story?”

  “How should I know? I don’t usually listen in on her chats with her patients. Nor with her local friends. But since you haven’t minced matters in telling me where I get off, surely you needn’t waste much time in disillusioning Kate?”

  “I certainly needn’t.”

  “Then what’s your worry? You don’t care about my feelings, my loss of face. Why then?”

  “I care because it puts us both in a false position.”

  “Me, yes. But I’d back you to see that you don’t collect any blame for that. And you—you’d only need to bother about being tangled with me if you were privately hot in pursuit of someone else. Which, so far as your public knows, you’re not. Or—” suddenly Jurice broke off to laugh without mirth, “or maybe you are, and now I’m expected to join you in a game of ‘Guess Who’?”

  “Nothing of the sort. You'd be wasting your time,” he said curtly.

  She read that as an evasion. “Then there is! And she’s a toffee nose, who wouldn’t like at all the idea of me as a Rival with a capital R. Or she’d be afraid of me, more likely. Now who? If you’re not telling, I’ll have to guess by a wearing-down process, eliminating the unlikelies. Start, shall we, with—”

  But there again she broke off, momentarily nonplussed by the cold fury in Oliver’s face.

  He said, “Do you mind, Jurice? That will do.” And then, “After this and now we understand each other, I daresay you’ll want to consider cutting your stay here shorter than you intended?”

  She found her tongue. “Well, thanks very much for the suggestion, but the answer is No,” she drawled.

  “Is that wise?”

  “It’s—expedient. I’ve let the bungalow now, and my flat in Town is being redecorated. Fair enough?”

  “If you say so.”

  “Besides, as you pointed out yourself, I’m Kate’s guest, not yours to dismiss as you please.” As she spoke she slipped from her perch and sauntered over to him. “Sorry, Oliver dear,” she said mock-sweetly. “But you can’t win, you know. Not against me. I know too much about you; I can guess more and I’ve an idea I’m going to learn the rest before you’re rid of me—if you ever are.”

  He looked down at her. “In any way that matters, we’re rid of each other already and for good,” he said, then turned on his heel and left her standing.

  Fortunately for Sarah’s peace of mind she had no idea that she had been seen again with Steven Carrage in circumstances which could be misconstrued against her. The next day they saw Tony take first prize for his sand space-ship and after lunch the three of them drove back to Fareborough.

  Busman’s holiday though the three days had been for her, she felt and looked the better for it. Which was all to the good, as, with Alice and Martha both due for their own holidays shortly, she hadn’t planned for a break at all in this, her first year.

  Tony stayed on at Monckton for a little while, then, completely fit again, rejoined his father at the flat. At the end of that week Alice took little Jean away for a fortnight and while Alice was away all the nursing and supervision duties, as well as the meeting or despatching of her young charges, fell on Sarah, with Martha as emergency ‘stand-in’ when necessary.

  Sarah supposed she should be grateful for business, and tried to be. But nothing yet eased the heartache of loving where she was not loved; of seeing Oliver Mansbury only passingly and of feigning complete sangfroid when his name cropped up in other people’s talk.

  It was on the last day of Alice’s absence that Martha asked leave to make an errand of her own. If she could fetch it that evening from a village a bus-ride away, she had the chance of a kitten companion for Moses, she told Sarah. That is, if Sarah didn’t mind her having another cat?

  Sarah assured her, “Of course not,” knowing how, throughout Great Aunt Lydia’s regime, Martha had hungered in vain for a cat. But now she added amusedly, “I’d be very glad for you to have a kitten, Martha. But how is Moses going to like it, do you think?”

  “Ah, he won’t,” Martha said. “Never do at first, cats. Think there’s only that much food and love and warmth in the world and they’ve got to fight and sulk to get their share. But come a month or two and he’ll be all over the kitten, pretending he invented it, you’ll see. Besides, this little chap is to be put down if I don’t have him, so I couldn’t very well say no to him, could I, Miss Sarah?”

  There was an outward bus which she could catch at six, returning by one at nine, and after she had gone Sarah put the children to bed and was watching TV when the doorbell rang.

  On the doorstep stood Steven Carrage and Tony, the latter carrying the minute suitcase of his possessions with which he had left a week or two
earlier. As usual he was calm and philosophic behind his owl-like spectacles, but Steven’s tone was agitated as he said,

  “Sarah, I realize this may be an awful imposition, but could you take my young man in again for a few days more?”

  “Of course. Come in. I always keep one spare bed for an emergency,” she told him.

  “But it’s so late—”

  “Late for his bedtime, I agree.” Sarah ruffled Tony’s hair. “Has he had his supper?”

  “Oh yes. In fact, he was in bed. I had to get him up to bring him to you, because I need to be away again at first light.” Steven paused. “Look, if we could get him to bed, might I have a word or two with you afterwards?” he added.

  Sarah left him with sherry while she went to see Tony into bed in his old room. As she did so, she recalled Dick’s warning again, and she could have wished either Alice or Martha were in the house too. But if this wasn’t a legitimate errand of Steven’s, what was? And in any case, Martha should be home very soon.

  Steven was doing a quarterdeck march across her den and he stubbed out a cigarette as she rejoined him. When she sat he did so too, but uneasily and forward, his fists clenched between his knees.

  She waited, sensing that his tomorrow’s errand was in some way a sequel to his earlier one, and after a brief silence he confirmed this. He said, “You shouldn’t think I don’t realize I owe you an explanation of these alarums and excursions. I do, so here goes. “You’ll remember that, the last time I was away, I came back at short notice when Tony was taken ill? Well, that meant I had to abandon what I went away to do. But now, tonight, I’ve learned that I have hopes of finishing the job. Do you remember too that I told you about a certain marriage which broke up?”

  “Yes, I remember. It was yours, wasn’t it, Steven?” asked Sarah quietly.

  He nodded. “Perhaps I meant you to guess that. Perhaps I knew, even so early in our friendship, that I could talk to you; that you might say the one word that would give me a clue, give me hope. And you did. In fact, you said two. You stated your own code—that love, real love, can’t be subdivided; it’s whole for one person or it isn’t love at all, and that anyone who didn’t know that wasn’t fully adult. Which Nora—my wife—wasn’t, in more ways than that. For instance, she had a wilful child’s temper and not a clue about money or making-do, so that if life or experience did jerk her into growing-up, I felt there was a gleam of hope she might realize too which of us, me or her lover, mattered most to her. And if she did, that might be the beginning of the end of the nightmare she had put me through.”