Consulting Surgeon (3 page)

Mrs. Craig had returned from her bridge party before the girls were ready to leave. But though she had been invited she did not accompany them, saying she was going straight to bed.

“Oh, Mummy, not one of your headaches again?” cried Coralie.

Mrs. Craig pressed graceful fingers to her temples and closed her eyes. “I’m afraid so. This one promises to be a demon.”

“You haven’t mentioned them in your letters. Do you have them often?” asked Ursula in concern.

“Increasingly, lately. I must see someone about them if they go on.”

“You certainly must. Wouldn’t you like me to stay with you instead of going out?”

“No, no. Go along with Coralie. It is quite enough to expect Mrs. Grazebrook to excuse one of us, let alone two. How are you looking, by the way?” She shaded her eyes with one hand and subjected Ursula to a critical appraisal. “Isn’t that suit a bit severe?”

Ursula glanced down at her suit of fine black barathea with which she wore a narrowly pleated nylon blouse. “Is it? I thought anything was permissible for cocktails.”

“Oh, it is. But with all the severity of that hideous uniform, I should think you would welcome the chance to ‘froth’ a little.”

Ursula laughed. “I don’t froth very easily. Probably I was born tailor-made.”

“Nonsense. You have allowed yourself to become typed, that’s all. And it is a great mistake. You should allow your choice of clothes to veer with your mood. Coralie—you
will
explain to Inez Grazebrook, won’t you?”

At their hostess’s house Ursula found, as she had expected, that she knew very few people. Coralie was quickly whisked from her side, and she was alone until an elderly man who had known her father came to speak to her. He brought her some sherry and they talked until they too were absorbed in a group of his acquaintances. This in its turn broke up, as is the way at parties, and then Ursula momentarily alone again, saw her hostess bearing down upon her.

Mrs. Grazebrook, large, florid and good-natured, took her by both hands in greeting. “Ah, there you are, my dear. When Coralie promised to bring you I planned a special surprise for you—a man you should meet, if you don’t know him already. You know how I adore fitting suitable people together...!” She paused to scan her guests. “So tiresome though. A few minutes ago I had him safely, but now he has escaped again. Ah, there he is—”

She dived into the crowds and took firmly by the arm a man whose back was turned. Then in gay triumph she bore him like a prize to Ursula’s side.

There was a moment’s silence—a moment of flashed recognition between Ursula and Matthew Lingard. Then Mrs. Grazebrook said: “Ursula, dear, I want you to meet Mr. Lingard, the orthopaedic surgeon. He has been in Egypt for nearly two years and he is on vacation now. But when that is over he is to be chief surgical consultant at that Sheremouth hospital of yours.” She looked up at Matthew. “That’s right, isn’t it? And Ursula—Miss Craig—is a ward sister there, so that makes you colleagues, doesn’t it, and with enough in common to get you nicely acquainted? I may add that I have been to a great deal of trouble to bring you two together, so, once my back is turned, let either of you say, ‘Dear me, what a coincidence!’ if you dare!”

She need not have worried. Momentarily at least she had left both her guests with nothing to say.

CHAPTER TWO

IT WAS Matthew who spoke first. He took Ursula’s empty wine glass from her, twirling its stem between his fingers as he said: “With all due respect to our hostess’s diligence, it
is
something of a coincidence, is it not? You must tell me if you find it unbearably unwelcome!”

For Ursula the situation was infinitely more difficult, more galling. He had known that she was a sister at the Easterbrook Trust, for she had told his friend so in the train. Yet, for some purpose of his own, he had deliberately concealed his own coming connection with the hospital, and that roused in her a resentment which even good manners could scarcely conceal. Her eyes met his squarely, but she was shamed by a little catch in her voice as she parried: “No more unwelcome, I suspect, than you do yourself!”

He laughed. “Be sure your sins will find you out,” he quoted. “I plead guilty to all that you are thinking, and fate—abetted by Mrs. Grazebrook—made sure that I was not to escape. Perhaps, even, I am wrong in thinking you might find our meeting unwelcome, and you are actually looking forward to continuing a diatribe which you began so ably?”

She frowned, looking down at her hands. “You know that I’m not,” she said in a low voice, hating the mockery in his own. “You know that I said what I did in the belief that neither you nor your friend knew anything of the conditions you were criticizing. A single word from you would have put me right about that. But you didn’t give it. In fact,” she added with spirit, remembering the warning of a glance which had flashed between the two men, “I think you even signalled to your friend that he was to say nothing. That—that wasn’t quite fair.”

“You think not?” He still spoke lightly, and she realized that he wore an armour of raillery which even an appeal to his sense of fair play could not penetrate. “You think not? But supposing I were to tell you that I said nothing—yes, and even warned Charles!—in order to save you from losing face?”

“I find it hard to believe that—”

“But I assure you it was so. At that moment you were so angry and so utterly right—in your own opinion!—that to have challenged you then and there would have been no less than cruelty. Later—aided by time and by a sense of proportion which I argued you must possess somewhere—you might take it better, I judged.”

“Not forgetting that ‘later’ in the circumstances was likely to be upon my own ward, even in front of my own juniors?” asked Ursula hotly.

“Not forgetting even that. On your own ward, Sister, you have all the armour-plating of your authority to protect you. Why, the awful majesty of a ward sister on duty—let him pierce that who dares!”

For a moment Ursula was tempted to turn away, making some excuse to leave him, thereby acknowledging defeat at the hands of his remorseless mockery. But then her lovely little head went up proudly. This man’s arrogance
expected
her to show herself hurt and unsure. Well, she would not, that was all.
She would not!
So she nodded coolly when he indicated her empty glass which he still held.

“Sherry, if you please,” she said.

When he returned with drinks for them both he said casually: “I suppose I mustn’t now be niggardly with my case-history, or you will think I have some dark secret to hide.”

“You are coming to Sheremouth soon?”

“Very shortly. In a week or two, in fact. At present I am finishing a vacation I gave myself after returning from Egypt a month or two ago.”

Egypt? So that explained his sunburnt appearance and the air she had noticed of his not seeming quite to fit into the English scene!

He went on: “I finished up my war out there, in the R.A.M.C. Then, a couple of years ago, I was invited to go back to put in a course of orthopaedic surgery in Cairo hospitals and to prepare some memoranda on the latest developments in our research on bone disease. When I returned here two alternatives offered—Harley Street, or the devotion of most of my time to a particular hospital. I decided that Harley Street could wait for a few years yet. So I took the consultancy at Sheremouth.”

“Harley Street could wait for a few years yet!” Ursula found herself envying his confidence and sureness of his own ability. It was a quality which, until today, she too would have claimed in full measure. Had she then lost it to this man’s ridicule? No, she had
not!

He was asking: “And about yourself? Have you been long at the Easterbrook Trust?”

“I did my training there, and I was offered a ward about nine months ago,” she told him.

“Wouldn’t you have been wiser to gain some broadening experience elsewhere when you became State Registered?”

“I judged that I owed my first loyalty to the hospital which had trained me. I could afford to leave wider experience for myself until later.” She felt pleased with the tone of assurance which she believed matched his own.

“Your career in nursing sounds planned and extremely permanent,” he remarked.

She raised calm eyes to his. “Surely it’s best to know where one is going?”

“Oh, surely—so far as any of us can. But doesn’t a woman take account of such will-o’-wisp beckonings as love and marriage? Were we not assured by friend Charles that the marriage figures in your profession are higher than in any other? Wouldn’t you find your own career interrupted by such a chance?”

“Not unduly, I think,” said Ursula dryly.

“You mean that you would expect to continue your work after marriage?”

“On the contrary, if I married I think I should regard the care of a man, his home and our children as a privilege that would also be a full-time job.”

“Then what did you mean?” he rapped out.

There was a little pause. Then:

“I meant,” she said gravely, “that I think marriage is one of the chances which my career can afford to discount.”

“Indeed?” His tone was non-committal, seeming to mark the dropping of his interest in the subject. So she changed it to ask him whether he had known Sheremouth before he decided to go to the Easterbrook Trust.

“Yes, I had,” he told her. “In fact, this morning I was returning from staying with my aunt, Mrs. Rupert Damon, who lives at Shere Court on the top of the Downs, about a mile beyond the hospital. She is a widow, and her only son, Foster, is a captain in the regular army, and is stationed in Cairo. I was able to see a good deal of my cousin and Averil, his wife, while I was in Cairo, so naturally I had some word-of-mouth news of them to bring the old lady. Do you know her?”

Ursula shook her head. “I must admit to knowing very few people in Sheremouth. For the resident staff, the calls of hospital life don’t give overmuch opportunity for social contacts outside.”

He regarded her unsmilingly. “You could still make the best of the opportunities you have. Meanwhile, what
are
your recreations?”

“Well, I read; I ride whenever I can afford it; I swim. Yes, and as Sheremouth is one of the leading ‘try-out’ places for West End plays, I manage to see some of them during the season. I enjoy myself.”

“I haven’t a doubt of it. Self-sufficient to a degree, are you not?” He stood a little back and put his head on one side as if in brief appraisal of her. Then, stepping forward again, in an almost conspiratorial whisper he asked: “But tell me, Sister Craig, has any lesser mortal ever dared to murmur in your presence the criticism
smug
?”

How dared he? She would have retorted hotly, even searingly, if the same awareness as before had not whispered that to show herself offended was what he wanted. All the same, her wine glass made a little clatter on the occasional table at her side as she set it down with fingers that trembled. And she was glad when she saw Coralie approaching. She would introduce her to Mr. Lingard and leave them together. He could scarcely disapprove of Coralie as pointedly as he did of herself. For to disapprove of Coralie was equal to wasting your substance disapproving of a kitten.

She made the introductions and then turned to her stepsister.

“Coralie, I’m worried about our having left Mama,” she said. “I’m going straight back, if you can find someone to see you home?”

Coralie began: “I dare say—” But Matthew Lingard intervened: “If you’d allow me?” His glance flashed to Ursula’s face. “I know the address, don’t I?”

“I believe so. That would be very good of you,” she murmured, though she regretted having put herself under even so slight an obligation to him.

When she had gone Matthew looked as appraisingly at Coralie’s dainty figure and dark, curled head as he had previously regarded Ursula. “For sisters,” he remarked, “you two are extraordinarily different.”

“Oh, but we’re not sisters,” said Coralie, fluttering her eyelashes at him. “My surname is Sefton, not Craig; Ursula—I call her Bear for short—is my stepsister.”

“And the ‘mama’ of whom Ursula—Bear for short—spoke?”

“That’s my own mother and Ursula’s stepmother.”

“I see.” He took out his cigarette-case, and while Coralie bent over the flame of his lighter she was envying Bear this attractive acquaintance. They evidently did not know each other well. So had Mrs. Grazebrook introduced them? Or had they met earlier?

For Coralie to wonder was to ask questions, for she had the primitive curiosity and the occasionally embarrassing directness of a child. She demanded of Matthew: “Have you known Bear long?”

“We met for the first time today,” he told her.

“You mean tonight—just now?”

“No, earlier today. We travelled up from Sheremouth together, and I was privileged to give her a lift in my taxi to your flat.”

As he spoke the characteristic lift to the corner of his mouth was, for Coralie, like a quotation from her currently favorite film star, and she felt her pulses quicken. She said rather blankly: “Oh. She didn’t say anything about it. I thought Ned met her train.”

“Ned? A slightly scholarly looking man with vague eyes?”

“Yes, Ned Primrose. He does scientific research. And he
is
vague—almost cuckoo, I sometimes think. But he adores Bear— fairly worships her.”

“So I gathered,” commented Matthew dryly, remembering that kiss dropped upon Ursula’s cheek. She hadn’t been surprised by it, he had noticed. It was probably the common currency of an accepted relationship between them.

“Of course," Coralie was saying, warming to her theme, “
we
’
re
always wondering when they are going to get married. I mean, they are ideally suited to each other, wouldn’t you say? Or didn’t you see them long enough together to judge?”

“I certainly didn’t.” The brusquerie of the words held the hint of a snub, but Coralie persisted relentlessly: “Well, you must have begun to know something about Bear at least. What do you think of her?”

There was a pause. Then Matthew said slowly: “She reminds me of an angel in a painting by Botticelli.”

“Botticelli?” Coralie wrinkled her brow as she searched for something cultural to say about Botticelli.

“Yes. He portrayed his angels in a characteristic way—rather lovely, but always cold, austere, aloof—

“Sort of self-satisfied—not quite human?” prompted Coralie with a giggle.

Matthew turned amused eyes upon her. “Something like that.” he admitted.

Coralie giggled again, this time with a certain relief. Obviously he couldn’t but admire Bear’s quiet poise and those beautifully chiselled features of hers—after all, everyone did. But she had been silly to envy Bear’s advantage in meeting him first. He had summed up Bear at once, and he hadn’t been impressed at all...

“Of course, men hate that sort of thing, don’t they?” she murmured, glancing at him from beneath her lashes. And was not prepared for the sudden irritable movement with which he flicked ash from his cigarette.

“Forgive me,” he said curtly, “but in such matters I like to voice my own opinion—without finding it classed in a general way with that of ‘men’.”

“I really meant that
you
sound as if you hated it,” she corrected hastily. And when he did not reply she found herself without a clue to his thoughts.

When Ursula reached the flat she found that Mrs. Craig had gone to bed and was already in a deep sleep. By the softly shaded light which was still on at her bedside Ursula noticed the bottle of sleeping tablets upon the bedside table. She picked it up, frowning as she did so. She felt sure that Nicola had said she had not consulted a doctor about her headaches. Yet, as Ursula well knew, these tablets were far too potent for anyone to be taking without medical advice. She determined to carry off her stepmother to a doctor as soon as possible—the very next day, if she proved well enough.

She switched off the bedside light, waited a moment to see if the click of the switch had disturbed Mrs. Craig, then tiptoed from the room.

In the lounge she stood thoughtfully for a moment before going to the kitchen for a tray, glasses and some drinks. She filled the electric kettle and set it near another tray holding coffee-cups. She supposed that if Mr. Lingard brought Coralie home, Coralie would ask him up to the flat, and somehow she believed he would accept.

She returned to the lounge with a book, meaning to read while she waited for them. But her thoughts were too intrusive; she could concentrate on nothing but the fruitless rehearsal of what is known as “staircase wit”—all those smart, crushing things she might have said to Mr. Matthew Lingard, had she only thought of them in time!

She tried not to think of what it was going to be like working under his direction. Christian Shere was a surgical ward, in constant and inevitable touch with the operating theatre. She had never yet had to doubt her ability to run it to the various surgeons’ satisfaction. But how she was going to react to the new consultant’s requirements she did not know. If their professional contacts were to be anything like their social exchanges, life on the ward promised to be difficult.