Nurse Lang (6 page)

Holmes brought the cases in from the car when he came downstairs again.

“Miss Melmore will be down to show you to your room, I expect,” he told Moira, touching his cap as he went out to put the car away, and she singled out her own case and set it down near the foot of the stairs.

There was something slightly unnerving about standing there waiting for Serena in the empty hall. The house was so very still, with only the small sounds of the garden drifting in through the open door, the twitter of birds and the noise of a garden-roller being dragged across the terrace and away across the lawn. Moira longed to see the garden, but she contented herself by looking at the old sporting prints which hung above the hall panelling until she heard a footfall on the stairs above her.

“I had forgotten about you,” Serena Melmore said, coming down the stairs towards her. “Will you bring up your case and I’ll show you where you are to sleep?”

She had spoken much as she would have done to a servant and she had not thought it necessary to have Moira’s case carried up to her room for her. Her impartial gaze suggested that she had been confronted with something accidental which she was forced to cope with against her better judgment, and Moira felt her heart beating stormily as she lifted her suitcase and followed her.

Serena led the way up the staircase, turning at the head of it along a gallery where heavy oak doors led into the bedrooms. Moira fancied that she heard voices behind one of them, Grant’s voice and Philip’s arguing plaintively, but Serena passed them all and marched on into the shadows at the end of a long corridor.

“I’ve put you in here.”

She flung open the door of a room flooded in sunshine, a room with a fine view over the park and beautiful old furniture, which could still appear cold and inhospitable because nothing had been done to make it look welcoming. There was no fire in the grate, although the room was chilly with disuse, and the bed was still shrouded in a cotton dust sheet which Serena whipped off with an air of impatience. It seemed obvious that she had hoped, even up to the last minute, that there might have been no need to make up the extra bed.

“One of the maids will come up and attend to this later,” she said coldly. “If there’s anything else you need, you must ask me. The staff will have their work cut out attending to Philip.”

It was not what Moira had expected, and anger mingled with the hurt in her heart as she stood in the middle of the floor after Serena had gone, looking round a room which could have been one of the loveliest in the whole house. Its windows let in all the sunshine there was, and the pale gold and cream of carpet and hangings accentuated all the depth of color in the rich mahogany furniture, yet there was a strange, chill atmosphere about it which caused her to shiver involuntarily.

When a gong sounded through the quiet house, she went towards the head of the stairs, meeting Grant as he stood at an open doorway.

“Will you come and see Philip before you go down?” he asked. “I think he should try to get some sleep as soon as he’s had his lunch.”

He led the way into a large, oak-panelled room where a warm log fire burned brightly in the open grate. Philip lay on a couch before it. A maid had carried up his lunch and was setting the tray out on the table beside him, but Philip seemed hardly interested in the food which Serena had prepared so carefully.

“Have you got settled in?” he asked as soon as he saw Moira. “Has Serena made you comfortable?”

“Yes, thank you.” She turned to Grant. “I hope I’m not making myself a nuisance and giving your cousin too much work. I’d like to—look after my own room, if I may. I’ll have plenty of time for that sort of thing when Philip is resting.”

“There’s no need for you to do domestic work,” Grant said briefly. “You are here to nurse Philip and your room will be looked after in the ordinary way.”

He turned towards the door as the gong sounded through the house for a second time, beaten impatiently by someone in the hall below.

“Sounds like Serena!” Philip grinned. “You’ll get a black mark if you keep her waiting on your first day back, Grant. When you’re at the hospital it does not matter so much, but when you are at large in the house there’s no excuse!”

“Where has Serena put you?” Grant asked as he closed his brother’s door behind them.

“In the room at the end of the corridor. The one with the four-poster—”

He turned to stare at her. She had been about to tell him that she thought it a delightful room, as indeed it could have been, but the conventional words stuck in her throat as she saw the greyness of his face and the harsh, determined line of his mouth.

“Kerry’s room!” he said, and the words seemed driven from him against his will. “No one must be there—ever again—in this house!” He went down the stairs as if he had forgotten that she was standing there and she could not bring herself to follow him. Her limbs felt frozen as she waited, and suddenly the silence in the great house seemed ominous.

Somehow she knew that Serena was waiting down there in the hall, and then she heard Grant’s heavy tread on the bare flags and Serena’s short, mirthless laugh.

“Where is Philip’s nurse?”

“She’s in the room you gave her.” Moira could scarcely recognize the voice as Grant’s. It was harsh and deeply shaken with subdued passion and she imagined that his cousin must recoil before it. “Why did you do this, Serena?” he demanded. “Why did you put her in that room when you knew how much it means to all of us?”

Moira fled before she could hear Serena’s answer, running back along the corridor to the room the other woman had allotted her for some motive of her own. There could be no denying the fact that Serena had put her there deliberately and Grant’s reaction had been all that she had expected.

Reluctantly she made her way back to the top of the staircase. There was silence in the hall below, and as she went down she saw Grant waiting there. His mouth was still compressed and the expression in his grey eyes was hard to define.

“I’ve arranged for you to have the room next to Philip’s,” he said briefly. “Serena made a mistake in her choice of rooms. I shall arrange to have your suitcase taken along there after lunch and the room will be aired before you use it. You will find it more convenient for attending to Philip.”

It was a difficult meal. Serena directed her conversation solely to Grant, asking about Philip’s accident and their journey home.

“Of course, he should never have gone out there,” she said decisively. “It was a foolish thing to do, even though it was mostly reaction. I still think you should have done something to stop him, Grant, instead of encouraging him by financing the trip.”

“There was no other way, within reason,” he said stiffly. “He had to get it out of his system.”

“And what has happened now?” Serena asked deliberately. “I can’t exactly see Philip accepting the future philosophically.”

“No philosophy has ever been strong enough to reconcile youth to such a fate,” Grant returned harshly. “In spite of himself, Philip must be made to believe in this operation—the hope of its success. He must be made to see it as the answer to his future.”

“What do you believe?” Serena asked pitilessly. “What is the real truth?”

“He has a chance. I can’t say anything more than that.”

The words themselves might have conveyed a sense of defeat if his voice had not sounded so grimly determined, and Serena forestalled Moira by saying:

“You’ll do your best for him. I know that. When he is well enough Philip will go across to the hospital,” he told Serena, “but in the meantime I think that he should be here, away from the constant reminder of operations and the medical background. At the moment he’s extremely sensitive to that sort of thing.” He rose, looking across the table at Moira. “I’m going across there now,” he said. “Would you like to come?”

She got up thankfully, conscious of Serena’s displeasure like a drawn sword quivering in the air between them.

“Is there nothing I can do for Philip?” she asked.

“He ought to be asleep by now,” he said, “and it will let him relax if he knows you are not available to answer his bell all afternoon.”

Moira went to find her hat, pushing her unwilling curls securely beneath its tight headband and hoping that she looked as neat and efficient as the hospital and Grant would expect. There was a thrill of real pleasure about going back into the old familiar atmosphere of wards and convalescence and cheerful conversation again, and the dry, antiseptic smell of the place smote nostalgically against her nostrils as soon as Grant opened the great glass doors to let her pass before him into the white-tiled hall.

“I want you to meet a friend of mine,” Grant said as he led the way along a corridor with doors opening on either side. “I’m relying on Doctor Hillier to help with Philip even before he comes over here and I think you should get on well together.”

They turned a corner and came upon another row of doors with neat brass plates on them, and she recognized them as consulting-rooms where people came and went with hope or despair in their hearts.

Grant stopped at the first one and she read the name on the plate. Doctor Hillier. The tempo of her heartbeats increased as he knocked at the door and went into a well-equipped consulting-room with a gay carpet on the floor, a desk at the window, two chintz-covered easy-chairs and a high couch placed conveniently near an angle-lamp on one wall. There were flower prints on the remaining walls, which were washed a pale, duck-egg blue, and Moira noticed that there were more flowers on the desk and on an occasional table in front of the long window.

Almost a feminine room, she thought, and was hardly surprised when she turned to look into two vividly blue eyes set under a fringe of fair, soft hair.

“This is Doctor Hillier,” Grant introduced her to the girl who had come through from an adjoining room. “Elizabeth, I want you to meet Moira Lang. She has promised to nurse Philip till we can bring him over here.”

“I’m glad,” she said. “It will do Philip the world of good to have someone of his own age to take care of him. We couldn’t have spared you a nurse from here, Grant,” she said, smiling in his direction, “but I expect you knew that! We’re still hopelessly short-staffed and Christmas always means a spate of weddings which leave us with still more vacancies! I’m going to ring for some tea,” she added, “though I expect you’ve just had your lunch. It seems ages since I had mine. Matron seems to be treating us to a diet these days. She’s apparently under the impression that we’re all putting on too much weight!”

While their tea was being poured Moira studied this woman who was obviously Grant’s intimate and friend as well as an able colleague. Elizabeth Hillier would be about Grant’s own age, or perhaps a year or two older, and there could be no mistaking her efficiency. It shone from her steady blue eyes and was accentuated by her crisp, astringent manner, yet beneath the surface Moira suspected an infinite fund of pity and understanding, attributes invaluable in her profession which would also make Elizabeth the sincerest of friends once her trust had been given. There could be no doubt that it had been given to Grant, and Moira felt that he must rely on Elizabeth's friendship more than a little and felt envious of what Elizabeth possessed. He had unbent in Elizabeth’s company immediately and she heard him laugh spontaneously for the first time in weeks as Elizabeth sketched a rough outline of all that had gone on at the hospital in his absence.

“You missed the Board of Governors,” she told him, “which wasn’t fair! You’ve had two spells of ‘pressing business’ away from Mellyn when they’ve been here, and I think they’re beginning to smell a rat!”

“I’d rather have been without this one,” he said.

“I know.” Her face sobered. “I’ll come over and see Phil tomorrow, if I may?”

“You know the mood he’s likely to be in.”

“Yes, I think I know it.”

Elizabeth had cast her mind back to those days when Philip had first brought Kerry to Mellyn and her eyes were deeply troubled when she looked at the man on the far side of the hearth. Whatever Grant had done, Moira thought, Elizabeth understood about that, too, and it had not undermined their friendship. Elizabeth Hillier was as staunch and true in her loyalties as she was sincere and eager about her work of healing, and she felt that Grant had introduced her to Elizabeth so quickly for a purpose. Perhaps he thought that the older woman’s help and friendship might make things a little easier for her at the Priory, that it might offset the tension of living in the house with Serena’s antagonism.

“I must go up to London to-morrow,” he said as they drove back to the Priory. “Work will be piling up in that quarter, too, and I want to see Archie Rathbone about Philip.”

“If anyone can give Philip confidence it will be Sir Archibald,” she said as the car turned into Mellyn’s tree-shaded driveway.

“You know him?” Grant asked, surprised.

“Not exactly!” she smiled. “I trained at St. Theodore’s and I saw him frequently on the wards.”

“Of course.” He appeared preoccupied, thinking of something else.

“This business of confidence,” he added after a pause. “It’s what Philip wants, in a way, but there’s something more. He needs a sheet anchor, someone to turn to in an emergency.”

“And you think I could help in that respect.”

“I believe you could—put the past into its true perspective as far as Philip is concerned,” he told her.

“One can’t exactly force trust,” she said in a stifled whisper. “It will only come naturally, like faith and—love.”

He brought the car to a standstill at the foot of the steps leading to the front door.

“You’ve given Philip something of hope and trust when his faith was extinct,” he said. “I can only ask you to continue the good work.” He hesitated, as if he were about to add something more, and then he swung his long legs clear of the steering wheel and came round to open the door for her.

“Perhaps it will work out,” he said almost stiffly. “Things do, occasionally.”

CHAPTER
SIX