Nurse Linnet's Release (20 page)

She recalled the night when they had been driving down from
London—the night that had culminated in an accident—when he had looked unusually pale, and on that occasion there had been perspiration beading his upper lip and his forehead.

Had he, she wondered, been on the verge of another attack of malaria on that night, and was that one reason why his behaviour had struck her as odd throughout the whole of the evening?

Tonight his behaviour was odd, too, but in a different way. In his look, as he studied her, there gradually crept a kind of wistfulness.

“Guy,” she asked suddenly, “are you feeling quite all right tonight?”

“Quite all right,” he answered, and tossed away his cigarette-end into the sea, with that sudden movement which always caused her to shrink a little, anticipating the moment when the red-hot glow at the end of it would be extinguished by the sudden kiss of the dark water.

He came over suddenly and sat beside her, and picked up one of her hands and examined it. He looked at the shell-pink finger-nails, at the slender finger which wore his ring, and in the moonlight the ring sent out shafts of fire.

“Linnet,” he said suddenly, absent-mindedly as it seemed playing with the ring, and turning it this way and that, “if I set you free would you be very grateful to me?”

Linnet felt almost as if his words had shocked her. She sat very silent for perhaps half a minute, and then she said:

“I’ve said I will marry you, and unless you’ve changed your mind about me, why should I be grateful if you set me free?”

“Because,” he answered, with a definitely curious twist to his lips, “you would then be free to marry someone else—someone you’d probably prefer to marry!”

“I have no intention of marrying anyone else.”

“No?” He looked at her sceptically and then started to light another cigarette. She watched his movements, mechanical and unhurried, but deliberate just the same, and she knew in those moments that he was possessed by some queer sort of deliberate determination to extract something from her which, even if it caused agony to himself, would at the same time provide him with a queer sort of satisfaction. In short, his mood of dissatisfaction with her was so great that he had to do something about it.

“I don’t think you can be quite well tonight, Guy,” she said gently, looking for signs in his face that would convince her that she was right. “It’s been terribly hot today. Are you sure you don’t feel—well, a little below par?”

“Absolutely sure.” But his smile was harsh, and his eyes swept over her harshly. “Just as sure as I am that you have no real love for me whatsoever, and therefore if I have any genuinely gentlemanly instincts in me I will set you free! Free to marry Shane Willoughby when you go back to England!”

Linnet began to feel a little cold and apprehensive.

“What right have you to say a thing like that?” she asked, controlling a faint, agitated tremble in her voice.

“Oh,” he shrugged his shoulders slightly, “largely as the result of observation on my part—before we left England, of course!—and also because Diana has spread a little intelligence. Apparently she wanted him for herself at one time, but something must have happened to her technique, for he escaped the net she cast for him, and now she’s doing her best to trap someone on board here. Diana needs a husband because her income isn’t very large, and also—being decidedly flesh and blood!—she’s not the type to live alone. You,
”
his eyes accused her, “are more like a creature of air and spirit than a woman capable of loving! Unless it is that I am very definitely a man for whom you have no love—reserving it all for Shane Willoughby!”

Linnet stood up rather abruptly.

“I think,” she said, “that if you’re going to talk like this we’d better go back and dance.”

“I have no intention of going back and dancing any more tonight.” He suddenly caught her by her bare shoulders, and she felt that he wanted to shake her. “What I do intend to do is to extract a little truth out of you, Linnet, my dear!” His fingers seemed to be boring their way like hot live coals into her soft flesh.
“
If I
let you go, Linnet, what will you do?”

“What will
you
do?” she counter-questioned, looking up at him with large, rather dark, but quite unrevealing eyes.

“Oh”—he laughed, and it was an unpleasant, mocking, almost an evil laugh—“find another woman, of course! Someone to replace you, my dear! And that shouldn’t be so difficult, with a whole ship full of lovelies!”

“I don’t believe you, Guy,” she told him, and her voice was very gentle as she continued to look up at him, for there was no doubt about it there was torment in his eyes. It caught at her heartstrings, clutched at her like a child in danger and whom only she could rescue, and her voice grew even softer. “I don’t believe you, Guy.”

She felt his arms close round her, and his mouth bury itself amongst her soft dark curls.

“No,” he said, on a kind of shuddering sigh, “of course you don’t believe me, because what ever happens to me, and wherever I go, and whatever the future holds in store for me, there will only be you, for ever and always—my little Linnet!” and he rested his cheek with a weary gesture against her hair.

“Guy,” she said more urgently, lifting a hand to touch his cheek—and in spite of his pallor it did feel unnaturally hot to her touch—“I don’t honestly believe you’re very well, and I think you ought to go to bed. Will you?”

“If you’ll tell me one thing first?”

“
Are
you in love with Shane Willoughby?”

She was silent. Impossible to lie about a thing like that, but at the same time she knew that whatever happened she must never allow him to draw an admission of the true state of her feelings out of her. In his own best interests—possibly in her own best interests, too, since he seemed to have become a part of her life, and she felt as responsible for him as for any child unable to direct its own course through life—she
h
ad to be wary about what she said just then. And because she knew she had to be so very wary she hesitated just those few seconds too long, and Guy said to her quietly:

“Well, never mind about it now
...
” He kissed her gently. “Go to bed—it’s too hot to dance any more tonight—and I’ll go to bed, too. Perhaps I haven’t been feeling as fit as I might today.”

“Shall I give you something?” she asked, looking up at him anxiously. “I’ll bring some aspirin to your cabin?”

“No.” He shook his head, smoothing her hair. “I don’t really require any doctoring, and there’s no need for you to worry about me—
N
urse Kintyre!” He smiled, a little whimsically. “It’s a long time since I called you Nurse Kintyre, isn’t it?”

Linnet was fast asleep, and so was nearly everyone on board, when the order was delivered over the engine-room telegraph for the ship’s speed to be reduced to dead-slow, and then finally for the quiet grey shape of the vessel to come to a standstill altogether. The Officer of the Watch had reported an incident which had to be investigated, and although Linnet knew nothing about it that incessant vibration which had been going on since they left their last port of call was suddenly stilled as the engines which turned the powerful screws in the water became suddenly inactive.

Then the engines were re-started, and the ship swung slowly about, and for half an hour and more proceeded in a circle over the quiet grey surface of the sea, while the dawn light stole into the sky and gradually and imperceptibly widened its triumphal arc of colour until the whole of the eastern sky was ablaze with rose and gold. But by that time lifeboats had been restored to davits, and the order, “Full speed ahead,” had been received over the engine-room telegraph.

CHAPTER
XX

In life there sometimes comes a tidal wave, in the ebb of which all old landmarks are washed away, and instead of a recognizable landscape nothing but a featureless prospect is to be seen on either hand. Nothing is any longer quite real, nothing any longer has the power to hurt, and the very pulse of life has slowed until it might be a decrepit taxi ticking over quietly at the kerb waiting for a passenger never likely to turn up.

Linnet felt like the taxi waiting at the kerb, wondering vaguely what she was waiting for, as she sat watching Diana carefully making up her face for dinner the night before the ship reached Mombasa. With Diana, making up her face was such an important ritual that she never hurried it, and under normal circumstances Linnet would have marvelled at the care, involving the application of countless different kinds of lotions and creams and eyelash treatments, which was expended on the creation of the finished product known as Diana Carey, and which resulted in so much admiration being poured out over her by appreciative members of the opposite sex. She would have marvelled and admired just as the least impressionable males admired, even if they didn’t capitulate. But tonight she was merely waiting for Diana to finish to accompany her into the dining-saloon. She felt vaguely surprised when yet another spot of perfume was added to the lobe of a shell-like ear, and another flick of a powderpuff did its best to improve perfection, but she was not impatient. Diana, rising from the dressing-table stool, realized how utterly apathetic she was, and chided her suddenly.

“Life goes on, my dear,” she said, looking at Linnet’s unnaturally composed pale face. “And life is real and life is earnest! How soon are you going to rouse yourself and realize that?”

Linnet felt almost disturbed by such a speech.

“Guy was your cousin,” she said. “I can’t think how—how you find it so easy to forget all about him!”

“My dear, I don’t! But mourning for him won’t help him—and it won’t help you! I know you feel that you’re to blame for all that has happened, but you’re not really, you know.” She flushed suddenly, looked at Linnet with unusual earnestness. “There’s something I’d like to say to you, Linnet—something I feel you ought to know
...
”

“Yes?” Linnet barely whispered, because she was quite sure that nothing anyone could tell her could make any difference to her own oppressive feeling of guilt. And if this merciful sensation of complete unreality hadn’t got her so closely in its grip her feeling of guilt would be even worse than an oppression—a vague burden of the spirit. It would be something that could cast an entire blight over the rest of her life henceforth, and awake in her unceasing remorse.

Diana studied her for a few moments, and then realized that there wasn’t much point in her saying anything just then. Linnet was not in the kind of receptive mood when anything could really be expected to penetrate to her inner consciousness—her inner awareness of things—and perhaps at this juncture it was best that what she had to say should be left unsaid.

She spoke almost impatiently to the younger girl.

“Oh, never mind now
...
!
But you’ve got to rouse yourself, Linnet—you’ve got to snap out of this! Guy ended his life because he was fundamentally weak, because as Dr. Ardroath has stated he wasn’t an entirely fit man at the time, and because
...
But there’s no point in going on about it. Tomorrow at this time we shall be in Mombasa, and the voyage will be over.”

“Yes,” Linnet said, and it was still not much more than a whisper.

Diana picked up her evening-bag, and slipped a stole about her shoulders, because it was cooler now that they were slipping down the east coast of Africa, and the Red Sea nights were well behind them; and then, just before she reached the door of the cabin, and Linnet had risen to follow her, she turned and gave the slight shoulders behind her an impulsive squeeze.

“Who knows,” she said, “but when we reach Mombasa you may feel much better about everything.”

Linnet, however, accompanied her into the dining-saloon without saying anything at all in answer.

As she took her place at the table she was acutely aware of Guy’s vacant seat near to her. Diana had suggested changing their table, and the Captain had been ready to welcome them at his own table, but Linnet had been curiously obstinate about remaining where they were.

She felt sometimes that she would never get over this shock—never come alive again. She would never forget the moment when the ship’s engines were stopped again—this time to her knowledge—and a brief burial service was read over for Guy. The terrible silence on all sides of her, the unnatural stillness of the deck beneath her feet, the pitying looks that were sent at her. She knew that there were the pitying looks, and she knew also that there were curious looks. She knew that many people were amazed because she hadn’t collapsed altogether and remained shut up in her own cabin until the conclusion of the voyage.

But she hadn’t done so because she had realized the necessity for going on mechanically with her everyday life—the reason why she was travelling with Diana, and because it was essential that she devote some of her time to her.

Besides, she was a nurse, and nurses had to overcome weaknesses that other people could indulge in. Not that she knew any conscious desire to do anything other than carry on as she was doing, hoping that people would notice her less and less as they drew near to their own ports of disembarkation, and that in time they would cease talking about Guy when they got amongst their new friends, and the excitement of describing how a man had actually committed suicide during the voyage, and that he had presumably, been a happily engaged man
...

There would always be that large question-mark, she knew, when people talked about him and her amongst circles comprising their own friends—and even in groups on board—and the question-mark would always follow the mention of her own name.