Consulting Surgeon (2 page)

Denis had been kind. Denis had understood that it was possible to care so much for one person that your whole world was shattered at his loss. Denis was a soldier, and at twenty-two had already found a philosophy which, however oddly expressed, she had known instinctively to be a true one.

Denis said that, in his opinion, the only cure for sorrow was to “work like the devil,” giving yourself no waking hours in which to be sad. And he said that people who died always left something of themselves behind with those who had loved them; that he’d sometimes argued with fellows that that might be the meaning of “immortality”—memories which you kept, not as idle regrets, but to work into the pattern of your own life, so that you became a better person
because
that other person had lived. One day you might even find it hard to recall what they had looked like, but the part of them that mattered would have become part of you. Did Ursula understand?

She had nodded dumbly, trying to. She and Denis had spent all his leave in each other’s company, wandering about London, holding hands sometimes and talking all the while. Nicola Craig, intent upon her role as the interestingly bereaved widow of a well-known scientist, fortunately had not noticed just how much time they spent together. And when Denis had kissed Ursula lightly when he had had to return to Malaya, she had known that she loved him.

Had he loved her in return? That was something she was never to know. For three weeks after landing he had been killed in a jungle ambush. And then she knew herself utterly, utterly alone.

Suddenly she had hated London and she felt she must get away; that she must do Denis’ memory honor in a way he would have understood.

She had always remembered the Sheremouth which she had known as a little girl, when it was not much more than an undiscovered fishing village. When she had gone back it had been a shock to find that it had grown into a “resort” beyond recognition. But there at the Easterbrook Trust she had found work—hard, unremitting, sometimes seemingly thankless work—but infinitely satisfying from its first hour.

“By doing so,” she thought, “I suppose I incurred the contempt of that opinionated creature opposite! I had been “crossed in love”; I had seen “glamor” in nursing!”

A small voice at the back of her mind recalled that Matron had had the same idea; she had questioned Ursula closely as to her reasons for wanting to take up nursing, and had shrewdly penetrated to the truth behind her evasive replies. And with stern kindness she had warned: “You must feel that nursing is to be a vocation for you, not a mere refuge from sorrows which, believe it or not, will pass. That is why we insist on giving you a period of trial which leaves both sides free to end the experiment. But somehow,”—her face had softened as she had held out a hand of dismissal—“somehow, Miss Craig, I think that you will be with us for a long time.”

Six years
was
a long time. Time to learn what Denis had meant about weaving the best of your memories into your own pattern. Time to grow away from a girl’s shadowed loneliness to a woman’s quiet happiness. Time to forget that love had ever hurt so much. She had achieved poise and serenity, and a cool efficiency in her work of which she was secretly very proud. And at twenty-four she believed that in such things she held the key to all successful living. She had loved Denis with a girl’s love. But there were other things than love, as she had gratefully found...

She was roused from her thoughts by the dining car waiter’s brisk: “Second lunch, please!” and she decided to go along the train for it.

In the dining car she found a single table just inside the door. She supposed that her late companions, who had taken the first luncheon, must be on their way back to their seats. But in the comparative silence of the train’s halt at a station she was surprised to hear a voice she recognized from behind the high partition facing her.

It said infuriatingly: “Yes. Who would have thought it? A face like a Botticelli angel—and a tongue like a whiplash!”

There was a chuckle in reply. “You certainly bought it, young Matthew! I did my best for you with honeyed words,
and
took your hint not to let on who you were. Not that we didn’t ask for it, really.”

The man called Matthew retorted crisply: “Milady claimed to be speaking from experience. So was I. I’ve seen her breed in action—dragons, no less! Afraid of some of them myself. So I’m not particularly repentant, though I’m willing to be convinced otherwise.”

“But you wouldn’t accept conviction at the hands of a Botticelli angel in charge of a ward at the Easterbrook Trust?” The older man sounded amused.

“Oh, I wouldn’t mind accepting it even from her—so long as she set about it by some other method than plunging unasked into my conversation and accusing me of knowing nothing of my own job!” was the cool reply.

After that there was increased movement behind the partition, and presently both men moved down the car towards the bar without having seen Ursula.

She began to drink her soup with fierce concentration. So he had made it a personal issue between them, had he? She felt her color rising. He had not only disagreed with her, but had been thinking her rude and uncouth for her intervention. His words rang in her brain—“her breed,” “a tongue like a whiplash,” “plunging in.” Fleetingly she wondered whether she was losing her sense of humor, for she could not recall having clashed so violently with a stranger before. But to that she assured herself that she
could
have laughed at the whole thing if he had only attempted to excuse or explain his attitude. Instead, he had said nothing when his friend had tried to make peace. He had just sat there with that enigmatic smile behind his eyes and had probably been thinking all the offensive things he had just said.

More than anything, she was chagrined to realize that he too had been speaking from experience. “My own job,” he had said. That meant that he must have some connection with medicine or hospitals. Well, she at least was thankful that she had not to work with him. She pitied those who had.

At Waterloo it was raining harder than ever. She was balancing her case upon a truck while she struggled to extract her raincoat when she felt a touch upon her arm. She looked up and exclaimed: “Why, Ned! How nice to see you!”

Ned Primrose stooped to drop upon her cheek the brotherly kiss which was his usual greeting. His round, goggle eyes were gleaming behind his spectacles. He explained modestly: “Well, it’s not an accident my being here. Coralie said you would be on this train.”

“So you came to meet me? That was sweet of you, Ned. Look, did you think to snaffle a taxi? You’ll come back to the flat for tea, won’t you?”

His face fell. “A taxi? Dear me, I quite forgot. You’ll get wet, won’t you?”

Dear, ineffectual Ned! He was always like that—moved by generous thoughtful impulses which he proceeded to carry out without a grain of practical sense.

She smiled at him. “Oh, well, never mind. We should have to queue now. We can go by Tube—”

Behind them a voice she had not expected to hear again said: “If you haven’t got a taxi, perhaps you would share mine and let me drop you both somewhere?”

She looked round, prepared to refuse, prepared even to resent his having managed to procure a taxi when Ned had not. But a glance at Ned showed her that for her sake he was anxious they should accept the offer, so she did so as gracefully as possible.

The man named Charles had disappeared, so apparently they were to share the taxi only with “Matthew.” Ned insisted on taking the occasional seat, leaving the other two to sit stiffly side by side on the main one.

Their conversation was that of polite strangers. Ned asked about the journey; the depressing change in the weather was discussed; after that there was silence.

Ursula reflected that, since he could not know that she had overheard his remarks about her in the dining car, the man at her side would certainly add “ungracious” to his other mental criticisms of her if she could think of nothing to say to show her appreciation of a gesture he certainly need not have made. Did she care what he thought of her? Oddly enough, she did. Of all the things she disliked most was to be misjudged—even by a stranger, as this man was.

But of what use to try to put herself right with him at this stage when, to judge by his stiff silence, he would not even meet her half-way?

When the flat was reached she thanked him again; he raised his hat, and when she and Ned had alighted, he leaned forward to give his own address to the driver.

She lingered a moment or two behind Ned, watching the taxi draw out of sight. An appropriate phrase presented itself in her mind—“the incident is now closed.” Well, so it was. Regarded dispassionately, it had never been anything more than an unimportant incident. And it was not at all likely that she would ever meet either man again.

Mrs. Craig was not at home, but Coralie was. She had been washing her hair, and came to greet them at the door of the lounge with her small head wrapped in an enormous turban of towelling.

Everything about Coralie was petite. Unlike her mother, who was tall and still youthfully regal, Coralie had tiny, exquisitely proportioned hands and feet, and Ursula had always envied her the ability to wear “small debutante” clothes. Her hair curled closely and boyishly, and her features seemed to have been modelled in miniature, giving her an appealing, doll-like expression of which she was not unaware. She was nineteen now, and when Ursula’s father had married Nicola Sefton, her mother, the two adolescent girls had at first been wary and diffident with each other. But that phase had passed, and now they were friendly enough, though sometimes Ursula thought that they still did not know each other very well.

“Hello, Bear,” said Coralie, offering her cheek for Ursula’s kiss. “So Ned managed to remember to meet you?” (Coralie had once learned in Latin class that “ursula” meant “a little bear,” and had adopted “Bear” as a nickname for her stepsister forthwith.)

“Yes, and he is staying to tea,” Ursula told her. “M-m-m—It’s nice to be free and at home for just on three weeks!”

“Mummy is out at bridge. My hair is still wet, but I suppose I’d better get tea for you.” Coralie touched the turban gingerly and looked towards the door as if she expected a fully laden tea-trolley to roll itself in.

Ursula laughed. “Don’t worry. As soon as I have had a wash I’ll do it.”

“Oh, I can’t let you—”

Ursula patted her shoulder reassuringly. “You concentrate on getting your hair dry. With that erection up you are so top-heavy that you look liable to crash-land at any moment. What is it all in aid of, anyway?”

“Cocktails. Tonight. You are invited too.”

“
I
am? How could I be?”

“You are, because I told Mrs. Grazebrook you would be home, and she said of course you must go too. You will, won’t you?”

“To Mrs. Grazebrook’s? Yes, I’d like to. I shan’t know anyone, but Mrs. Grazebrook is good about that. She seems to have a memory like a card-index, and she never leaves people standing about without introducing them.”

“No, she doesn’t. Although it could be quite exciting the other way, I always think.”

“The other way?”

“Well, being allowed to see if anyone comes to introduce himself because he thinks you look attractively lonely or something,” said Coralie rather wistfully.

“How does one look attractively lonely?” queried Ursula. “I look merely wallflower.” But somehow she felt that Coralie had already tried the experiment and had found it entirely successful.

She took Ned to the kitchen to help with getting the tea, though, once there, she found it quicker to do most of it herself—there was an old story that Ned, asked to set a tray, had been found pencilling out the solution to a quadratic equation on the traycloth. But she was glad of his company and they had quite a lot to talk about.

Ned said suddenly: “That’s a pity about your cocktail party. I’d meant to ask you to come with me to
Much Ado
.”

“Oh, Ned, I’m so sorry. And I’d love to see it. But, of course, Coralie couldn’t have known. Will you take us another night instead? You hadn’t got the tickets, had you?”

“Not yet.” The very unlikelihood of Ned’s looking as far ahead as that had its advantages, after all! “But I wasn’t taking Coralie this time—just you.”

“Oh!” Ursula paused, then added belatedly: “That would be nice.”

“Yes, I thought so,” beamed Ned.

“You’d better write it in your diary or you’ll forget,” she teased.

“I—shan’t forget,” said Ned seriously.

After tea, when he had gone and Coralie had removed the turban to reveal a mass of clustered curls like those of a Greek boy, she went to manicure her nails in Ursula’s room while Ursula finished her unpacking and began to dress for the party.

Coralie said idly: “You must be glad to be out of that awful barrack for a while. Why you go on working there when you needn’t, I can’t imagine.”

“But I do need to. I happen to love nursing and, after all, one must live!” replied Ursula with a smile.

“Yes, well—if you really like it, I suppose that’s different, though I can’t think how you can. And when I said you needn’t I meant that you don’t
have
to refuse to take an allowance from Mummy. She considers it misplaced pride on your part. She said so.”

“Mama didn’t want me to go to Sheremouth in the first place. But when she didn’t actually forbid, it, as she could have done, I told her that if she would let me go I would never expect her to help me with money. And I never have.”

Coralie spread the fingers of one hand in order to examine her manicure. “It sounds a bit involved and unnecessary—as if you had been fiercely keeping a bargain with yourself rather than with Mummy.” She paused, then added thoughtfully: “Bear—why don’t you marry Ned?”

“
Marry Ned
?” Ursula’s hairbrush, sweeping deeply into her shining waves, was suddenly arrested as she turned to face her stepsister. “Marry Ned? Coralie, what
do
you mean?”

Coralie was on the defensive at once. “You needn’t look so startled. He is awfully fond of you—”

“No more than of you. And he is
old
—he was Daddy’s friend!”

“He is only about forty, and I always thought he was more of a protégé of your father’s—anyway, much younger. There’s nothing so very odd in the idea.”

“But there is. Even if he is only forty, I’m only twenty-four. He hasn’t a thought beyond his science, and I’m not looking for a husband. As an idea it’s more than odd—it’s ludicrous.”

“It’s not.” Coralie sounded sulky. “He is in love with you—so far as he could remember to be in love with anyone. Anyway, Mummy says all that doglike devotion of his isn’t healthy, if it doesn’t mean anything. And even if he is staid and stuffy—” She broke off. Perhaps, even to Bear, she could not
quite
say that!

But Ursula had taken her unspoken meaning. Quietly, trying to see the humor of it, she said. “You’re implying that I’m staid and stuffy too?”

“I didn’t say so.”

“But you were going to say it.” Ursula turned back to the dressing-table and took up her hairbrush again. “Sorry, Coralie, but even if I agreed that Ned was dull and that I matched him in it, it still wouldn’t seem to me to add up to a good reason for our marrying. I should forget it, if I were you.”

When Coralie had returned to her own room Ursula sat staring at her reflection in the mirror and pressing the bristles of the brush hard into the palm of her hand.

She wanted passionately to deny Coralie’s criticism. Was it
possible
that to Coralie’s nineteen-year-old eyes she appeared so “set” that there seemed no difference either in age or in outlook between herself and Ned? And could Coralie really believe that Ned had ever thought of her in any other way than as his younger sister?

A sudden disturbing thought prompted—could Coralie believe it
because Ned himself had allowed her to?
Little things began to take on significance. He had never before gone to the trouble to meet her at Waterloo. His kiss had meant nothing, though she supposed that that man “Matthew” would have been a witness of it. But there had been Ned’s stolid: “I wasn’t taking Coralie—just you.” Her own surprise, not acute enough at the time, seemed now to have been justified.

She stood up abruptly, pushing away the intrusive thoughts. She could not love Ned and she did not want him to love her.
She did not want to lose Ned as
a friend.
But perhaps it was already too late for that. For her stepmother had already laid a distasteful finger upon their happy relationship, calling it “unhealthy”. And now Coralie, if not Ned himself, had done the rest. Why, oh, why must people
spoil
things so?