‘You’re a bit of a snob, MacMillan, aren’t you?’
Stung by the note of reproach in his voice, Liz stared at him.
‘A snob? Me?’
‘Yes, you!’ he said, standing up and running an angry hand through his hair. His fair locks were a bit untidy. He needed a haircut.
‘Cordelia can’t help her background any more than you can help yours. And it’s as unfair for you to mock her for the way she was brought up as it would be for someone to look down on you for the way you speak. Cordelia’s got the money to go and sit out the war in some funk-hole - yet she chooses to stay here and do her bit. Doesn’t she deserve some credit for that? Or are you really so naïve you believe that because she’s well-off she doesn’t have any problems?’
He flung out of the room, his white coat billowing out behind him. Liz felt like bursting into tears. He’d never spoken to her like that before.
‘You put your foot in it there, MacMillan,’ said Naomi softly. ‘I rather think you touched a raw nerve.’
Liz looked at her in dismay. ‘Is he right?’ she asked. ‘Am I being unfair?’
The other girl shrugged. ‘Well, you can say what you like about the honourable Miss Maclntyre, but she is one of the world’s workers, you’d have to give her that.’ She stood up. Time I went back to the salt mines myself. See you later, MacMillan.’
She went out, leaving Liz alone with her thoughts. They weren’t comfortable ones. She thought of Lady Maclntyre, whom she’d met the day of the evacuation. With a mother like that, maybe it was no wonder Cordelia hadn’t a clue how to make tea - but she’d been more than willing to learn. She always was.
When she’d asked for help in tying her cap that first day, Liz had suspected she might be one of those girls who were attracted to the VADs because they wanted to swan about in a nurse’s uniform. Liz had met a few of them. They didn’t last long - till they were asked to give a patient a bedpan perhaps, or clean up after a child who’d been sick. Cordelia wasn’t like that at all. She was always willing and always cheerful.
Adam had been perfectly right. She had been unfair. Unkind, too, making fun of Cordelia for something that wasn’t her fault. And she’d offended Adam - worse, she’d upset him. She wouldn’t have done that for the world.
Sphygmomanometer.
She was to go the female medical ward up on the second floor and ask to borrow their sphygmo— How did the blasted word go again?
Sphygmomanometer
. There. She had it again. She’d better keep repeating it to herself.
Why did hospital corridors have to be so blinking long? Oh Lord, she’d forgotten it again. She could get as far as
sphyg
—, but the rest of the word had gone. Something like
mete
r on the end of it.
Sphygmeter?
No, that wasn’t right. She stopped short, biting her lip. She was going to look like a right eejit.
Especially as she was always sounding off to Sister MacLean about wanting to do more medical things. Especially as it was Sister MacLean who had sent her on this errand. Especially as it looked as if she was going to have to go back and ask her to write the word down.
‘Stop biting your lip,’ came an amused voice. It was Adam. He seemed to have regained his usual amiable disposition.
‘Am I glad to see you!’ said Liz. She was too, despite their recent encounter. A medical student would know the word for sure.
‘What’s the problem?’
‘I’ve been sent on this message and I can’t remember what for.’
‘Short-term memory loss? At your age? Probably the first signs of madness, MacMillan. Do you think you should see a doctor?’
She scowled at him. ‘I can’t remember the word. It’s the thing that measures blood pressure.’
‘Oh, the sphygmomanometer?’
Liz put her hands on her hips. ‘That’s easy for you to say.’
He laughed again. ‘For you too, MacMillan. If you split the word up. Like this: sphyg-mo-man-ometer. Easy.’
He made her repeat it two or three times. Then, before she could screw up the courage to offer him an apology, he spoke again.
‘And MacMillan, by the way... I’m sorry I had a bit of a go at you earlier on. About Cordelia. I went over the score and I shouldn’t have. I apologize.’
‘No,’ said Liz, the butterfly wings of her cap dancing as she shook her head. ‘You were absolutely right. I’ll mend my ways. I promise. I intend to become a reformed character.’
Adam’s lips twitched. ‘Don’t change too much, MacMillan. I rather like you the way you are.’
Liz took Mario to visit her grandfather and was secretly amused to see how Peter MacMillan, prepared to do the stern patriarch act in the absence of her father, was so quickly won over by the Italian charm. Also, to be fair, by Mario’s warm personality and genuine sincerity. She’d already observed that he was one of those men who got on as well with his own sex as with the opposite gender.
He was at home in any company too. From her grandfather’s house, Liz took him down the road to visit the Gallaghers. He walked into the room, saw the picture of the Pope and immediately crossed himself. Helen introduced him to a beaming Marie Gallagher.
‘Ma, this is Mario Rossi. He’s a friend of Liz’s.’
‘You’re Italian? A Catholic boy?’
Out of sight of her mother, Helen rolled her eyes at Liz. The Gallagher parents hadn’t been exactly delirious when they’d found out that Eddie had metamorphosed from being the brother of their only daughter’s friend into her steady boyfriend. Helen’s father was barely managing to tolerate the mixed-religion romance.
‘Yes, Mrs Gallagher,’ said Mario, ‘but I’m proud to say that my mother was Irish. Her family came from Cork.’
After that he could do no wrong. He charmed Marie, was respectful to Brendan, patted Finn on the head and told him what a handsome fellow he was, joshed about with the boys and taught Helen to sing an Italian song, insisting that Liz join her and make it a duet. A good time was had by all and, like Liz, he was given an open invitation to the tenement home in the Holy City.
‘Well,’ she said, as she walked him to the station, ‘you were a big success. They really took you to their bosom, didn’t they?’
As usual, she realised a split second too late that she had said the wrong thing. The look he gave her took her breath away.
‘Perhaps you could consider taking a leaf out of their book, Liz. Patience has its limits, you know.’
She looked away guiltily.
Mario’s limits were reached one snowy Sunday in January. They were spending the afternoon in the flat above the café playing records of Italian songs on the wind-up gramophone. Watching the snowflakes floating down past the big bay window, Liz was feeling warm and relaxed, enjoying the music and thinking happily that she wasn’t expected home for a good few hours yet.
She turned from gazing out at the snow and looked indulgently at Mario. He was amusing himself by giving her extravagant translations of the words of the songs they were listening to, complete with theatrical - and very Italian - gestures.
‘Mario, if I cut your hands off you wouldn’t be able to speak.’
He pretended to take offence, slipping into an exaggerated Italian accent.
‘Huh! Ze lady, she think-a I use-a my hands-a too much. Tell me,
bella scozzese
, how you describe a spiral staircase without-a you use-a your hands? Eh?’ He reverted to his real accent, cocked his head to one side and folded his arms over his chest. ‘Tell me that, my inhibited little Scotswoman.’
Chuckling at their antics, Aldo Rossi went back downstairs to attend to his customers. Liz was replacing one disc in its sleeve a minute or two later when she felt warm arms slide round her from behind, under her jumper. And the memories she tried so hard to suppress came shooting to the surface.
Spinning round in panic-stricken reaction, she saw Mario’s face inches from her own.
‘I can think of much better ways of using my hands than describing a spiral staircase,’ he murmured. ‘You have such a neat little waist - not to mention other parts of your anatomy which leave me cold when I see them illustrated in the textbooks, but look very different when they come packaged as you. Kiss me, Liz.’
His voice husky with desire, he dipped his dark head towards her, one hand sliding up her body. Liz couldn’t fight the urge to thrust him away. She did so with some force.
‘Liz! For God’s sake!’ He stood where she had pushed him, in the middle of the room, and glowered at her, his dark eyebrows drawn angrily together.
‘What is the matter with you? How many times do I have to tell you that I won’t try to make you go too far? Can’t you trust me by now? God, I’ve been so patient! Och, bloody hell, Liz!’
English obviously wasn’t sufficient to express his irritation. He muttered an angry imprecation in Italian. It disconcerted her, reminding her of his foreignness, of the passionate nature usually hidden beneath the wisecracking Glaswegian side of his personality.
‘You tell me you like me,’ he said, beginning to pace about the room. ‘You know that I like you. I like you a lot. We get on great together. And you’re so lovely,’ he said, wheeling round and coming to a halt in front of her.
The anger in his voice melted away as he stood gazing at her. ‘And I don’t want to do anything too naughty.’ He smiled the smile which did indeed turn Liz’s insides to melted butter. ‘Well... maybe just a wee bit naughty...’
Deep inside her, something stirred into life. She ached to be able to relax into his arms, to let him touch her. She wanted to kiss him deeply and to be kissed passionately in return. She knew why there was a problem about that. He didn’t.
She looked at him and saw the irritation fade once more. He never stayed angry with her for long. He took a step or two towards her.
‘You look as though you’re about to face a firing squad, Elisabetta.’
She could understand why he got annoyed with her, the way she seemed to welcome his touch, then suddenly started fending him off. Her behaviour would confuse anybody. Could she possibly tell him the truth?
‘Trust me,’ he said softly. ‘I’m a doctor. Well, almost.’
Funny. Adam had said that once.
Mario moved closer. ‘Och, Liz,’ he breathed. ‘I could make it so nice for you. We could make it so nice for each other.’
She knew that. She knew there were delights. If she couldn’t get over her problem they must remain forbidden fruit. She liked him so much. She thought, maybe, that she loved him...She cleared her throat and began. ‘There’s this chap where I work...’
‘But why on earth would I think badly of you?’ Mario asked fifteen minutes later as they sat together on the settee, separate but holding hands. She had told him the whole story: the way Eric Mitchell had pounced on her almost as soon as she had started at Murray’s; the impossibility for a shy sixteen-year-old of knowing how to cope with such unwanted attentions; her fear of telling other people about his behaviour; how she had finally stopped it from happening.
‘I tried telling Miss Gilchrist once,’ she explained, ‘but she more or less suggested that I was to blame in some way, had led him on...’
‘That’s ridiculous,’ snapped Mario. His brows were drawn together again, but Liz understood that he was angry not at her, but on her behalf. ‘Anyone who knows you at all would see at once that you’re the last woman in the world to lead a man on like that. I know that better than anybody,’ he said ruefully, lifting the hand he held and giving it a little shake.
‘So, Doctor,’ she asked, ‘is there a remedy for my condition, or am I a hopeless case?’
‘Well, if the patient wants to be cured, that’s half the battle.’ He tugged on her hand, but gently. She got the message. He wanted her to come closer, but it would be her decision if she did so. Not his.