Air Ambulance (2 page)

The child looked at Blair for confirmation of this.

“It’s perfectly true,” he said. “Pilots are always helpful sort of people, Andy. If you knew how to make the plane go, you could always help to bring it back to Heimra more quickly,” he pointed out.

The child pondered the wisdom of this in silence for a moment and then, abruptly, he stretched
o
ut his hand to Alison, willing to accompany her on the conditions offered.

She took the thin, cold fingers in hers, chafing them gently as he looked for his gloves. They hung by elastic from his coat sleeves, and she thrust his frozen hands into them as the doctor came down from the plane.

“Everything’s O.K.!” he announced. “Gowrie’s itching to be off, so we’d better not hold him up any longer. Strange chap!” he mused. “Belonged here on Heimra at one time, but doesn’t seem interested now. Wouldn’t even get down for the usual cigarette at a safe distance! Ah, well, I suppose he wants to get back to the mainland as quickly as he can. It’s a job to these fellows. Nothing more.”

But a job they do with infinite skill and patience and understanding, Alison thought. When they are on duty they
are
the ambulance!

“Gowrie?” Blair said. “Yes, it’s an island name. There were two families of them on Heimra some time ago. I always think it’s a pity when people go away like that—when the very last roots are torn up.”

Perhaps that was what had brought him back to Heimra, Alison pondered, looking at the dark, determined profile etched against the grey peaks of his native land. The roots that his family had put down into the sparse, rocky soil had proved stronger than all the ties of his chosen profession when it had come to a question of choice, yet the break with medicine must have been difficult. He had been known at the Victoria as a coming man, a brilliant surgeon in the making, and now it had all been thrown aside for this!

She looked at Heimra and across the angry strait of Coirestruan to Heimra Beag, and suddenly she knew what had drawn him back. Not just the pride in possession nor the glory in a name, but all the magic of these secret islands which had to be felt to be fully believed.

Even now Heimra had begun to cast its spell on her; even now her heart beat suffocatingly close against her throat as the wind which blew across the
machar
stirred and caressed her cheek.

Her fingers tightened on Andrew’s small, gloved hand and she led him gently towards the cabin door.

“I’ve got to say goodbye!” he cried, pulling away from her. “He isn’t coming with us.”

He was halfway towards Blair, adulation shining in the piquant little face as he looked up at this splendid figure of a man who was surely his hero, whatever the rest of the world might think about him. Alison’s eyes were suddenly so misted by tears that she could not see whether Blair kissed him or not.

Certainly he lifted him into his arms and put him down again, and when the engines revved into life he shook him rather solemnly by the hand.

“It won’t be long,” he said. “We’ll be waiting for you coming back.”

There was no obvious sign of emotion in the strong, set face of the man beneath her as Alison moved to close the door. His jaw was as hard as granite and his eyes suddenly as coldly grey. If this parting had distressed him he did not show it, which was perhaps best for the sake of the child, but somewhere deep down in her heart she wished that she had been able to offer him reassurance.

As the Heron rose and settled in the sky she remembered that no mention had been made of Andrew’s mother.

“All right back there?”

Ronald Gowrie had turned in the pilot’s seat, and she unbuckled her own seat belt and went towards him. For a moment she could not answer his question. The face he had turned towards her for a split second had been deadly white, and his hands were clenched on the controls till he became aware of her watching him.

“I—yes,” she murmured indefinitely. “Are you?”

“Me?” he lied. “Don’t worry! I’m not going to plunge you in the drink. Anyway, Ginger will be taking over in a couple of shakes. We’re clear of Heimra now.”

CHAPTER TWO

TO Alison’s dismay, almost all the way back to the airport Andrew was sick. He clung to her piteously, yet at the back of his quick little mind there was the thought of guiding the plane towards the mainland.

After a while Ronald Gowrie took him up in front to stand between him and Ginger, and for the first time Alison was able to look at her list. The doctor had added Andrew’s name to it before they had left Heimra, together with the particulars of his case.

“Hannah MacKelvie,” she read. “Aged 81, of Bowmore. Fracture of the pelvis; suspected rupture of the small intestine, Cardiac condition.”

“Andrew Montgomery Blair. Aged 5 years and 8 months, of Garrisdale House, Heimra Beag. Tonsillectomy.”

She read the second name again and again before she put the list back on the overhead rack above her seat. Andrew Montgomery Blair. So the child was his son—the future Blair of Heimra! The tragedy of it struck her with the force of a physical blow as she recalled the man himself, strong, upright, powerful in body and mind, arrogant almost in the perfection of his manhood. What had happened, she wondered. What had happened to give him a son like this?

Suddenly she was remembering that Blair of Heimra had not mentioned his wife. Not even in the moment of parting had he spoken to Andrew about his mother. Perhaps she was dead.

Far beneath them the mainland began to take shape, like a vast relief map laid carefully on the grey sea, its deeply-indented coastline standing up in sharp little ridges which gave place eventually to the upheaval of mountains and the long silver arm of a loch.

The vast panorama of sea and island and loch and hill held Alison spellbound as she sat watchfully beside the motionless figure on the stretcher, but when they flew above the shipyards and Ronald Gowrie took over from his First Officer, Andrew came back to sit beside her, awestricken by all there was to see. For a small boy, Alison realised, ships and cranes and gantries were far more exciting things than the magic of islands starred on a romantic sea.

For the next few minutes he clung to her hand as if he would never let her go. The airport was new to him, and there was so much activity going on everywhere he looked, but he followed her towards the ambulance without a word when she said that they must go.

The stretcher with Mrs. MacKelvie on it was already safely inside. The old lady was awake now and a little apprehensive, but she smiled stoically when the kindly St. Andrew’s ambulance men spoke to her.

“Everything’s all right, Mrs. MacKelvie,” Alison assured her looking in at the open door. “You’ve made a wonderful trip.”

“And you!” Suddenly Ronald Gowrie was at Alison’s elbow, smiling down at her, his mouth slightly crooked, his dark blue eyes friendly now. “For a first flight you did very well yourself, nurse!” His tone was still slightly mocking, but there was a certain amount of warmth behind it which she noticed with relief. “Are you off duty as soon as you get back to the hospital?”

“I believe so.” She felt herself flush as he continued to look at her. “But this is my first flight, so I’m not quite sure what happens. We’re on a rota, of course, but I have my time off.”

He stood between her and the ambulance for a moment. “I’m going to Glasgow as soon as I check in,” he announced. “We’ll meet again, of course, if you’re going to be on the air ambulance for any length of time, and I may even ditch you one of these days, so let’s celebrate while there’s yet time.”

“Celebrate what?” she asked, laughing. “My destined dip in the Atlantic?”

“Among other things!” he grinned back. “On second thoughts,” he added, “I think I’d rather land you safely on an island—if we had to come down in an emergency.”

“We’re being foolish and wasting time,” she reminded him. “Who knows? We might be on the same rota again quite soon.”

He still stood deliberately in her way of escape.

“I could take a chance on that,” he agreed, “but I would much rather make sure. What about tomorrow evening? You must be off duty sometime.”

Alison hesitated.

“I really ought to get some mending done.”

He laughed outright.

“Good heavens, woman!” he pointed out, “You can make do and mend any time. I’ll call for you at the Nurses’ Home at seven.” He had been there before, she thought, and evidently knew the way. “We can have a meal somewhere and make up our minds whether it will be a show or a dance afterwards. That suit you all right?”

“I’d like to come,” she said, suddenly meaning it because these past two hours in the air together had forged a strange sort of bond between them. “I’ll look out for you tomorrow at seven.”

He turned away with a smart salute and the ambulance driver moved towards the doors to close them behind her.

“Had an easy trip, nurse?” he asked in the kindly voice which seemed common to all ambulance men. “It’s been a fine day here.”

“It was wonderful!” she told him, feeling once again the exhilaration of her flight above the hills. “A tremendous experience in every way.”

She slipped in beside the stretcher and took Andrew Blair on to her knee. He was slightly sleepy now and a trifle more nervous, but the air-sickness had gone.

“You’ll get something nice to eat as soon as we get to the hospital,” she promised, “and there will be lots of other girls and boys to play with.”

The remark had evidently been a mistake, for he shrank more closely towards her.

“I don’t want to play with them,” he said. “They’re rough.”

“Not in hospital,” she assured him quickly. “The nurses will take care of you, Andrew.”

Still he shrank close to her.

“I want
you
!
”
he declared sleepily.

In any normal child, Alison thought with a full heart, the tired cry would have been for his mother, but Andrew’s mother had not been fit to make the journey with him or had deserted him long ago. She might even have died at his birth.

The thought lingered, nagging at her mind all the way to the hospital. A child needed his mother even in such a small emergency as this, but she dared not ask Andrew about his parents, not even to satisfy the recurring doubt in her own mind.

The hospital lights blinked through the gathering dusk as they swung in under the main archway, past Casualty, and on up the winding drive, and the old, strong feeling of security wrapped her round. Here, in this place, illness and death were held at bay, miracles of healing were wrought, and people were nursed back to health in the all-pervading calm of the quiet wards.

The ambulance swung round and came to rest at the west door, and immediately two white-coated orderlies were ready to help them out. Alison bent over Mrs. MacKelvie and gave her a brief smile.

“You’ll soon be safe in bed,” she said in answer to the unspoken question in the old woman’s eyes. “I’ll try to come and see you in a little while.”

Hannah MacKelvie seemed to understand, although her English was not good, and Alison made a mental note about taking a few Gaelic lessons in her spare time so that she might at least communicate her assurance to these old people in their native tongue.

Andrew still clung to her hand. Sister Burnside hovered at the reception desk, waiting to take over her new charge, but somehow Alison felt reluctant to let Andrew go.

“Matron wants your report on the Blair child right away,” Evelyne Burnside informed her briskly. “I had no idea he was a—”

“Please don’t say it!” Alison begged swiftly, aware of Sister Burnside’s chagrined flush even as she uttered the warning. “I don’t think his father would like him to feel different.”

“The fact remains that he
is
different,” Evelyne Burnside said loftily, “but I know my job. Which is more than you seem to do, nurse. There’s such a thing as insubordination.”

Alison bit her lip, aware that she had been guilty of questioning a senior’s conduct to a certain extent, but she could not have stood aside and seen Andrew hurt by a word he might not understand.

“I’m sorry, Sister,” she apologized, bending quickly to loosen Andrew’s feverish grip on her fingers. “Will you go with Sister, Andrew, while I tell the nice lady who looks after us all that we’ve arrived safe and well?” she asked.

Andrew’s lower lip trembled, but he pursed his mouth and nodded. He did not give Evelyne Burnside his hand, however, as she shepherded him away along the corridor, which must have seemed to him a long white tunnel of never-ending doors.

“Now, nurse?” Matron said, when Alison finally stood before the desk in her comfortable room. “How did it go?”

She was a woman who believed strongly in the personal touch, and this, she understood, had been a first flight.

“Very well, ma’am. It was wonderful weather, and the patients travelled very comfortably.”

“Of course you know that you will have all sorts of weather to contend with,” Matron said, examining some papers which lay on the desk in front of her. “The rough with the smooth. There have even been babies born in the air ambulance before it could get here, but I dare say you could take care of that, too. In complicated cases you would be given very full instructions, of course.” She was still studying the papers, frowning a little. “The instructions came in for landing on Heimra after you had left,” she observed. “It saved another journey.” She looked up. “How did the boy travel?”

“He was airsick, I’m afraid, but I understand that he is afraid of a long trip by sea.”