Seaside Hospital (4 page)

CHAPTER THREE

Lisa, feeling unfamiliar with the rather sophisticated amber velvet dress and the noisy surroundings, looked around helplessly. She tried to be pleasant to
Ellard Lindon, who was obviously doing his best to amuse her, but she had to admit that she felt out of her element in this luxury hotel.

“Let’s dance again,” Ellard said, intrigued by her lack of enthusiasm for the dancing, the dinner he had chosen, and even the champagne.

She rose, but as she walked across to the dance floor, she was shocked to see Randall Carson with Thalia.

Her heart lurched sickeningly. There was no mistaking that particular expression on his face; half-scornful, half-angry. She had displeased him again.

Ellard slipped his arm around her waist and they smoothly took off to the music. It was a very good orchestra, and the tune had been, up till now, one of Lisa’s favorites. Now she hated it.

Ellard glanced down at Lisa. “You’re quiet. Don’t you ever let yourself go and have a good time?”

“I told you, I’m the quiet type. I warned you I’d bore you.”

“On the contrary, I’m having the time of my life. I’ve never met a pretty girl before who let me do all the talking, or who knew how to keep still!”

She was hardly listening to his compliments. Her eyes searched the room for Randall Carson. At last she found him, at a table with Lady Frenton and Thalia, but the fourth person was not, as Lisa had feared, Thalia’s brother Derek. She had felt that if Derek had been the fourth at that table, it would have been more than she could bear.

Ellard was aware of her tension easing. “That’s better,” he approved. “We’ll have another drink when we go back to our table.”

“No, no more, please, I have to be back by midnight and—” she began urgently.

“Back by midnight?” he broke in incredulously. “Why, this dance goes on until three!”

“I’m sorry, but I told you from the first that I couldn’t stay out late,” Lisa said firmly. She had a special late pass, but she had no intention of saying so. As yet, he had no idea that she was a nurse at St. Mildred’s.

“Why not? Tell your landlady you must have a key.”

“I don’t live in lodgings, and I happen to want to be in by midnight,” she insisted.

To her surprise, he said no more about it. Back at their table, he went out of his way to be amusing, and she forgot that the time of their leaving hadn’t been settled.

She did not see Randall Carson dancing again, but coming from the powder room much later, she ran headlong into him, and the impact sent her backward, her purse flying out of her hand. He bent and picked it up, and as he handed it to her, his eyes went significantly to the clock above her head.

“It’s rather late for you to be out, isn’t it, Nurse?” he asked curtly.

“I have a late pass, and I’m going now, anyway,” she said, smarting under his tone. It was too unfair of him to pick on her in off-duty time, she told herself angrily.

She hurried back to Ellard, and to her surprise he made no comment when she said she was ready to go.

To her relief they left the hotel at once, and he had no difficulty in getting his big car out of the parking lot. The rhythm of the car, after the unaccustomed champagne, made her sleepy. Her eyes felt as if they would not stay open, but when she noticed the clock on the dashboard said ten to twelve she began to be alarmed and sat up in her seat.

“We’re going the wrong way!” she said sharply.

“I don’t think so,” he said easily. “The night is young. We must show that family of yours that you’re not a baby now—at least, I suppose you are over 21?”

“I’m 22, but I don’t live at home and my ... employers don’t happen to share your views about time.”

He pulled the car in to the side of the road. “Employers?” His eyes narrowed. “What on earth do you work at, then, to be living in?" He switched on the light, and looked at her intently. “Wait a second. I’ve had the nagging impression that I’ve seen you before, but at first I thought it was a fleeting likeness to Jacky that made your face familiar. No, I’ve got it—my arm! That’s it. Good grief, why didn’t I think of it before? A nurse—at the hospital!” Lisa sat agonized and was shocked to hear him laugh as he switched off the light. “I’ve never had a nurse for a girlfriend before,” he chuckled. “No wonder you’re different!”

She was desperate. She wrenched at the car door, but the handle wouldn’t move.

“All right, I’ll take you back,” he said. “I’ll get you back before midnight, too.”

He reversed the car slickly, and sped back to town in a way that made Lisa hold her breath. She closed her eyes and held on, afraid to speak in case it took his attention off the road.

They arrived before she realized it, and he had swept in a wide arc right up to the hospital, through the main gates and up to the front entrance.

“On time—as I promised,” he chuckled. "Do I get a goodnight kiss for it, Lisa?”

“Oh, how could you—the main entrance! We’re not allowed—oh, I must fly!” she cried, tumbling out of the car just as the clock began to strike midnight.

“Good night, Cinderella,” Ellard called, as he started up the car again.

A tall man strode by, evidently on his way to the residents’ block from the staff parking lot; he stared in ill-concealed surprise as the crimson car swept out of the drive.

Her cheeks scorching, Lisa ran blindly taking the shortcut through the ambulance yard and the coal heaps to reach the nurses’ residence. Again she had been seen by Randall Carson, in circumstances that wouldn’t be considered by him to be in her favor.

Jacky believed in publicity. Whenever she wasn’t at the theater, she spent her time in the public eye. Derek Frenton, who also liked being seen about, pandered to her, and soon she was in the local paper, featured swimming in a particularly daring swimsuit, with Derek standing adoringly just behind her.

Lisa caught Mary cutting out the photograph from the
Barnwell Bay Observer
the next day when she came off the wards and glanced into Mary’s bedroom on the way to her own.

“What are you hiding behind you, Mary?”

Reluctantly Mary relinquished the cutting; Lisa paled.

“You didn’t have to keep it from me,” Lisa said, dropping it on to the bed. “I’m not surprised, though I hadn’t expected to see it so soon.” She went to the door. “I think I’ll change out of this hot uniform.”

“I’d better not go down to the beach with you, Lisa,” Mary said. “It’s no use. I don’t get any work done. My mind strays.”

So Lisa went alone, taking one of the bikes from the rack in order to cycle down to the older end of the town, where the quiet bays and unfrequented beaches were. In this sheltered cove she had already done a good deal of her studying for exams this season, but today she found it so difficult to concentrate that she gave it up.

There was the problem of the garden party. If she didn’t go, Jacky might be difficult; yet there was no real excuse regarding opportunity, for Lisa had seen this morning on the board that her next free time coincided with the day of the party. At the same time she shrank from going to Derek’s home, now that things were so different between them.

Lisa sighed and, getting up, climbed to the top of the cliff with the intention of taking a brisk walk, but just as she reached the top, Ellard Lindon’s big crimson car pulled up and he looked out, waving cheerily.

“Lisa! Hop in. I’m just dropping in to Chertonbury.”

“I only have an hour left,” she said, shaking her head. “I daren’t risk being late back, after last night.”

“I’m sorry about that, Lisa,” he said, sobering. “I’ve been thinking about it. Do get in, I want to talk to you. I’ll make sure you’re back at the hospital in time.”

He had a persuasive way about him, she reflected; it was hard to be cross with him for long. She climbed in, and he drove smoothly along the cliff-top.

“What on earth made you take up nursing, Lisa? It must be awful in that hospital on a wonderful day like this! Good heavens, my dear girl, you were made to be petted, not worked like a slave.”

“We don’t work like slaves, and you’re mixing me up with my sister. My aunt always said that Jacky was the one who was born to be spoiled.”

“So you both lived with an aunt, did you? Haven’t you got any real home background?”

“No, not any more.”

“What do you do with yourself on holidays?”

“I go home with my best friend, Mary Thorley. Her parents have a farm farther along the coast. They’re very nice.”

Ellard seemed unusually thoughtful as he drove. “When am I going to see you again, Lisa?”

“Now you know I’m a nurse, you can guess how little free time I have. I’ve another late pass this month due to me, but I’m saving that—” and then she broke off, biting her lip, as she remembered too late that there was now no reason to save that late pass. It had been planned weeks ago, before she and Derek had parted. “I just remembered. I don’t have to save it at all,” she said quietly.

He stopped the car and looked searchingly at her. When he wasn’t smiling, he looked a lot older than she was, a man who might well be impatient of emotions and loyalties. She watched him uncertainly, as he asked the question she had been dreading. When it came, she didn’t know how to answer it.

“A broken affair? Did I cause that?”

“No, you didn’t cause it,” she managed.

“Jacky, then!” he said, with finality. “That girl leaves a trail of trouble behind her, and I don’t think she’s even aware of it!”

Lisa looked straight ahead. Whatever Jacky had done, she wasn’t going to talk about her to this man.

“Jacky’s doing all right for herself,” Ellard went on, casually picking up the local paper from the back seat and holding it so that Lisa could see it. “That wouldn’t be your late boyfriend, I suppose, Lisa?”

That was probing too deeply. Fiercely she turned on him, her anger driving away the tears that had been so near.

“Look, Ellard, you made a bargain with me and I’m going to do my best to keep to it. Let’s leave it at that, shall we? After all, my private affairs are not any concern of yours.”

For a moment his face darkened, and her heart began to beat faster. Then he smiled until his face crinkled up and his eyes were mere slits of amusement. “That’s another thing I like about you, Lisa. You look such a quiet little thing, and then all in a minute you get up your temper and put me well and truly in my place. Only,” he warned, as he put the car in gear again, “don’t do it too often, poppet, will you?”

Lisa had given Mary a very brief account of the dinner date with Ellard the night before. Mary didn’t ask any questions, but when Lisa admitted that she had been to Chertonbury for tea with
Ellard instead of spending all her break working on her notes for the next lecture, she could not help looking surprised.

“I thought you didn’t care for him much, Lisa.”

Lisa fixed her cap and went soberly beside Mary down to the wards, taking a long time to find an answer to that question. At last she said, “Oh, I don’t think he’s going to be so bad after all.” Quickly changing the subject, she said, “I’m in a bit of a spot about the garden party, Mary. My sister wants me to go, but how can I this year?”

“Get out of it,” Mary advised decisively. “Of course you can’t go, in the circumstances. We’ll do something else. I never did like the party much.”

Lisa squeezed her arm. Mary was such a loyal pal, ready to give up what had been a day to look forward to, just because Lisa was not anxious to go.

“Why don’t you go yourself, Mary—with Jerry and Mike? Go and have a good time,” Lisa urged.

Mary shook her head. “No, I’ve a much better idea. Let’s go home to my family for the day. We can lounge about in our old clothes and forget the hospital staff. Mother and Dad will love to have us.”

Lisa felt better at once. Now she could tell Jacky with truth that she had other plans for that day. She wrote a note to that effect and left it at the stage door.

Jacky was furious when she read it.

She telephoned Derek, who was at that moment in trouble with his father. Sir Jules had had to work hard to attain his position and make his life a success. His son’s lazy, extravagant ways irritated him as much as his wife did with her social climbing and her snobbery. That day it had come to a head. Yet an
o
ther bill for the repair of Derek’s high-powered car after another minor accident had tried his father beyond endurance.

“You can get to work in the boatyard, young man, and you can stop running around with showgirls!” his father said.

And then Jacky had come on the telephone. The call had been put through to his father’s office. In acute discomfort, Derek took the call.

“Look, I can’t talk now—” he began.

“You’ve got to listen, Derek! It’s my sister. She won’t come to the garden party, and I did so much want her to meet you and your mother—” Jacky wailed.

“Well, if she won’t come, she won’t,” Derek said, uneasily watching his father drumming the desktop with his fingertips. “Anyway, what does it matter? You’ll be there, won’t you?”

“Yes, of course I shall,” Jacky admitted, “but I did want my sister to be there, too. Couldn’t your mother send her a special invitation? Then Lisa would have to come.”

There was a stunned silence; then Derek asked in a dazed voice, “What did you say?”

“I said then my sister Lisa would have to come,” Jacky repeated impatiently, not caring what she said; she was so angry to think that Lisa wasn’t more anxious to see her rich boyfriend and his family.

Derek paled. “I’ll call you back later,” he muttered, uncomfortably aware that his father was showing enough interest in the conversation to be unashamedly trying to hear what Jacky had been saying. “ ’Bye for now,” he said, replacing the receiver.

But although Sir Jules had not caught what Jacky’s high clear voice had actually been saying, it had reminded him of something else he wanted to say to his son.

“What’s happened to that little fair girl you used to take around? Lisa something or other?” he barked.

“Well, I—that is—I don’t see her now,” Derek stammered. “She didn’t get much time off—she’s a nurse.”

“Now look here, my boy,
I l
iked that girl Lisa,” his father said. “She’s a good type. Works hard. Straight, honest. I’m fed up with the butterflies you usually waste my money on. Now, I’ll give you one more chance. Get that girl Lisa back and leave the other one alone. From what I’ve seen of this Jacqueline in the press, she’ll be no good to you.”

Derek gloomily took the smaller car out in order to have a quiet time to think about the mess he was in. His father didn’t know that Jacky and Lisa were sisters, otherwise he would never have said he wanted to see Lisa back. But how on earth could he keep Jacky, he wondered, if he was to go back to Lisa—even supposing Lisa woul
d
have him?

It was a peerless day and would have been splendid for taking Jacky bathing, but he dared not. His father would find out, and then his last chance would be gone.