Call Nurse Jenny (47 page)

‘Matthew.’

‘I want to hear her say this to my face.’

‘You can’t. You can’t see her. The divorce case …’

‘I have to.’ Screwing the letter up, he thrust it into his trouser pocket and made out of the room.

‘Your breakfast,’ she called after him, but received no reply.

The night he’d attacked Crawley, his first glimpse of her in years had been a fleeting, distorted one, seen through a mist of rage. Now as he opened the door to her knock, she stood before him, as he remembered she had done years before that, still with the same petite build, the same blue eyes wide and timid. Perhaps she looked a fraction more mature but still vulnerable and unsure of herself, prompting a natural reaction in others to take her under their wing.

‘I got your letter telling me to come here,’ she began tremulously. ‘I’m glad you wanted to see me.’

He didn’t smile. He dared not. He stepped back to let her in and she followed him into the sitting room like a small, subdued dog at his heels. He closed the door and they stood facing each other in the filtered light of a drab September afternoon. The room was very quiet. They were alone, his mother reluctantly and full of disapproval of his request leaving them to themselves. It occurred to him that he hadn’t yet asked Susan to sit down, but to do so would be an acceptance of her and he was wary of betraying how he felt looking at her. Seeing her again had resurrected that surge of adoration the sight of her had always brought and it alarmed him.

To cover the discomposure her nearness aroused, he said stiffly: ‘You said in your letter you weren’t happy.’

She nodded, catching the fuller part of her lower lip briefly between her small teeth, an endearing little habit that had always stirred his emotions to see. Matthew clenched his hands against them.

‘So what did you want from me?’

She came forward a fraction, a small movement of appeal to that love he’d once had for her, an attempt to awaken it if it now slept. She couldn’t know how easily the single movement could awaken it, for its sleep had never been total. Her eyes were glistening.

‘I’m so sorry, Matthew, for everything I’ve done. I know I was wrong, but you were so far away and I didn’t know if you was … oh, Matthew.’

Tears had begun trickling gently down her cheeks. He was in danger of being disarmed by them. He didn’t want to look at them, so lowered his eyes, remembered all the crying he too had done; the pain remembered was becoming insufferable.

‘Matthew, don’t turn away. Look at me. I’m sorry. I really am.’

Now he looked up, surprised at his own reaction. What did she expect of him? That he’d take her in his arms, soothe away all the sorrow she was displaying, tell her it was all right, that he forgave her and wanted only to take her back as though nothing had happened? His whole being cried out that that was what he wanted to do. He felt his lip curl contemptuously with the knowledge of how easily he might, contempt for himself that he knew how close he was. But he had grown embittered. Her tears, they weren’t for him. She wasn’t hurting for him, only for herself, had always only ever thought of herself.

Rationality seemed to spear through his body, but its searing pain was his only salvation. He kept hearing Jenny saying, ‘It’s nothing to do with me.’ But it was everything to do with her, rationality, security, trust. He could trust Jenny. He could never trust Susan – ever again.

When he did speak his voice seemed to be conveying every vestige of that agony spearing him. It was an effort to talk at all.

‘I’m sorry too, Susan. I can’t … I can’t have you back. I know I can’t. You see …’ He stopped as her eyes opened wide with terror. His immediate instinct was to grab her to him to stop that awful look of desolation. Fighting it, he shut his own eyes so as not to see how she was looking at him.

‘I need to trust someone,’ he heard himself saying. With an effort he pulled himself together, willed himself to look at her while trying to keep the mirror of his soul closed to her. It made his stare harder than he intended. He saw her shrink back a little, the gesture almost destroying his resolve until he remembered again the agony she had caused him over the years of wanting her.

‘You see,’ he began again. ‘It wouldn’t be any good – not now.’

‘Matthew, no!’

He pushed on, ignoring the cry. ‘The first sign of anything not going your way, any inconvenience, any outside temptation, and you’d be off again. It’s not your fault. It’s how you are. When we married, I’d no idea. All I knew was I loved you, adored you, thought you could do no wrong, that you were perfect. But it wasn’t enough, was it? I couldn’t hold you. I’ll never be able to hold you.’

She had been gazing up at him, the dawning of what he was saying growing apparent in her gaze, but her protest came in a wail of disbelief. ‘I don’t know what you’re saying, Matthew. I know I was wrong. I
am
sorry. I’ll make it up to you. I will. I still love you. I’ll make everything up to you.’

He wanted to counter, ‘What about Crawley?’ But that would be dragging it down to the level of a slanging match. Suddenly he wanted to be rid of her. He was beginning to feel unsteady, shaky, a dull nausea in the pit of his stomach. He wanted to sit down but he dared not.

‘I want you to go.’ His voice sounded hoarse, strangled.

‘Matthew …’ Her eyes suddenly hardened, narrowed with suspicion. ‘Is it someone else?’ He almost laughed. ‘It’s that Jenny Ross. You’ve fallen in love with her, haven’t you? You don’t want me now.’

He didn’t reply. Every word she said seemed to be driving her further from him. He couldn’t believe that he could ever
not
be in love with her. It would hover inside him, a small devil, to the end of his days ready to resurrect itself the second his guard was lowered. But at this moment he was merely beginning to feel sickened. That she could say Jenny’s name with such contempt! Jenny could make six of her, ever willing to take on his burden of fears, his indecisions, and not complain. Yet his fear was that he’d burden her too much, more than she could stand. Not for himself, but for her. Was that true love? If it was, then Susan paled into insignificance beside it.

‘I might’ve known.’ Her words pierced through his thoughts, her tone contemptuous, covering the fear that consumed her.

He blinked. ‘I think you’d better go, Susan. Back to Crawley – try to make the best of it. You can use your charm on him, Susan. You know how to do that, don’t you? You’re good at it. He won’t be able to resist. As I once couldn’t. You’ll be all right. You’ll always be all right.’

Bitterness rose up inside him without bidding, like some other self. He was astounded by his own words, their harshness. All at once the past had become another country. He held her look of disbelief, aware that his was arid.

She took a step or two towards him, her expression still one of abject pleading, but his arid stare remained a wall of glass. Realisation began to dawn on her and she gave a small defeated sob, turning from him like a rabbit released from a car’s headlights. She had no idea how near she had come to shattering that fragile barrier.

Making blindly for the door, her sob breaking into full-blown weeping, she pulled it open, fleeing past his mother whom he saw standing just beyond. A bitter grin twisted his lips that she had been there listening to it all.

‘She’s gone then?’ The stiff statement reached his hearing, but he found himself incapable of answering her. What in hell’s name had he done? Susan had been in his grasp and he’d thrust her away. For a moment there came an urge to run after her, but he let the moment pass.

It was the dim light of October making her feel low. The days had begun rapidly to shorten, the promise of a long winter already dulling the sky. It had to be; people were usually affected by the weather. Even so, she should have felt brighter than this. After all, Matthew was now a free man.

Jenny looked across the dinner table at her mother. ‘Matthew Ward’s divorce came through last week, did you know?’

Mrs Ross smiled as she chewed, her fork engaged in selecting a piece of potato. ‘He should feel easier now. I suppose you do too.’

Jenny’s knife and fork lay idle each side of her plate, although she gripped them as though gripping a pair of lifelines. ‘I suppose I do in a way.’

‘You and he might spend more time with each other.’

‘We already do.’

‘You know what I mean.’ Her mother hadn’t once lifted her eyes from her plate. Jenny knew exactly what she meant. It was a pity Matthew didn’t.

For days he had been moping indoors. Off duty this weekend, she’d gone over to his house yesterday, been heartily welcomed in by his parents, invited to stay for a bit of tea with them. But seeing Matthew’s obdurate expression of moodiness, his apparent lack of joy at seeing her, wrapped up as he was in his own sullen grief of his lost marriage, she had felt a flush of anger at him and excused herself, saying she didn’t want to leave her mother on her own on a Saturday night.

She hadn’t gone across today at all. He could stew in his own morass of misery if that was what he wanted. Of course she ached to see him but she was no longer prepared to be his whipping boy whenever he felt like it. She had made up her mind about that. He was free now. Divorced. Nothing he could do about it. It was up to him to get on with his life. But she wished she was included in that life, and still had no idea whether she was or not.

‘I’m sure I don’t know what he’s going to do,’ she said to her mother, a little sharply.

‘Are you going to see him after dinner?’

A ring of the doorbell interrupted an awkward denial. Jenny leapt up from the table. ‘I’ll go.’

She left her mother murmuring that she couldn’t think who that could be on such an overcast Sunday afternoon and hurried to the door.

For a split-second her mind wouldn’t work, having a problem placing the face. But already the name had burst from her lips in disbelief.

‘Ronald!’

He looked awkward, a man faintly aged since she had last seen him. ‘I remembered your address,’ he began. ‘I was going to write, but I was in the vicinity, attending a medical seminar, and I thought before going home I’d look you up. Hope you didn’t mind.’

She could only stare at him. ‘Er … no.’

He gave her a somewhat silly grin, slightly apologetic. ‘I was at a bit of a loose end.’

‘Oh.’

‘I’m a free agent, you see. Nothing to rush back home for. Of course there’s surgery in the morning, but it only takes a few hours in the car to get back to Bath, so I thought why not look up an old friend?’

‘Oh.’

‘My marriage broke up,’ he continued by way of explanation for his unexpected appearance.

Jenny heard her mother’s voice filter faintly from the dining room. ‘Who is it, dear?’

Hastily she called back over her shoulder. ‘An old friend, Mumsy.’

‘Well, ask her to come in, dear. Don’t let her stand on the doorstep.’

Jenny ignored the invitation but any moment her mother would come to see why.

‘Look,’ she said quickly, lowering her voice so that Mumsy wouldn’t hear. ‘Can you wait outside while I get my coat?’ Somehow she didn’t want to go through lots of introductions and explanations to Mumsy. ‘We can take a walk and you can tell me about yourself and why you’re here.’

He was looking embarrassed. ‘Perhaps I’d better go, Jenny. I didn’t mean to …’

‘No,’ she cut in. ‘I’ll only be a tick. I’d like to know how you are.’ After all, it was only polite. She couldn’t turn him away.

She closed the door, gently so as not to seem rude, and hurried back along the hall. She felt flustered, not from renewed affection but by the fact that Matthew might have seen him at the door. Silly really – it could have been anyone. But he might see her walking with Ronald. What would he think? She felt suddenly unaccountably rebellious. What the hell did it matter what he thought?

‘Didn’t you ask her in, dear?’ Her mother, coming from the dining room, regarded her a little bemusedly as Jenny quickly gathered her coat from the skeletal stand that held their everyday coats.

‘I’m just going for a walk, Mumsy. Shan’t be a tick.’

‘It looks rather like rain. Silly going for a walk when you could have asked her in. I wouldn’t have minded. You’d best take a brolly with you.’

To appease her, Jenny grabbed one of the two umbrellas sticking out at an angle from the guard rail around the foot of the coat stand.

‘Don’t be out too long, dear,’ her mother’s plaintive departing call followed her as she made towards the door. ‘You don’t want to get wet. And bring her in when you get back.’

‘She has to get straight back home,’ Jenny returned on the point of closing the door on her. And Ronald could go straight back too. Said he was divorced. If he had come here hoping to pick up where they had left off years ago, the cheek of it!

He was leaning on the gatepost looking somewhat woebegone. As she reached him he straightened up, taking her arm and threading it through his as though it were his right, whether she objected or not. But it would have seemed rude to have shrugged away from him. He was only trying to be amicable and he did seem a little uncomfortable.

‘It’s so nice to see you again,’ he was saying as he conducted her, guiding her before she realised it away from the main road from where he had obviously come. Still confused by him turning up like this out of the blue, it did not dawn on her until they had gone some way that this would not have been the route she would have consciously chosen. She took a quick glance up at Matthew’s house as they passed it, but there was no sign of life. Jenny breathed a small sigh of relief.

‘It’s nice to see you again too,’ she said.

‘Well, as I was nearby.’ He looked abruptly at her. ‘You know, I was pretty broken up when you gave me up, Jenny. I really thought we had something going for us. I kept hoping. But I know you weren’t the sort to play a chap along, so I had to decide to put it all out of my mind. I joined the Medical Corps, you know. That’s where I met Penelope. We got married. We didn’t see each other all that much. Then I came home unexpectedly one day and found her in bed with someone.’