Nurse in Waiting (10 page)

CHAPTER
SIX

The two girls looked at each other for a long minute. Then Joanna said gently:

“Yes, come in. Come and sit down.”

“You were just going to bed.” It was the nearest approach to an apology for her intrusion which Shuan could be expected to attempt.

Joanna smiled. “Getting on that way. But I’m afraid
I’m
a dreadful “potterer’. I wasn’t quite ready for bed.” She paused, then looked directly at the girl to challenge:
“
Why
must you get away from home?”

“I want to. I
—
Oh, it’s no good my staying here!
But I haven’t said a word to Mums. I came to you because of what you said about—about antique shops or something. You said I ought to get a job
in one—”

“And you said it was impossible!” Joanna reminded her with a smile.

“Yes, well—I’ve changed my mind. I thought I’d go to Dublin.”

Joanna reflected swiftly: How careful one ought to be! On the strength of this child’s smattering of knowledge about good glass
I
seem to have taken it upon myself to point her career!

Shuan went on blandly: “Mums wouldn’t let me stay there, of course. I should have to go in every day. But there’s a train from Tulleen that’d get me there between ten and eleven in the morning
—”

Joanna took a deep breath. This was where these vague blossomings of an artistic ambition had, regretfully, to be nipped in the bud! As gently as she could, she said:

“I don’t think that would do, Shuan. You see, no establishment that was worth anything at all
to you
would want you trailing in to begin a day’s work at that time. But I dare say you haven’t had time to think of the practical difficulties at all. You would have to leave here very early every morning
—
even Saturdays!—and you’d have either to bike to Tulleen station or go in with Ren
é
on the milk-floa
t—”

“I’d bike,” put in Shuan morosely.

“Even so, you’d still have to get back the same way each evening. And what about all the things you do here? Weren’t you telling Mr. Carnehill you’d got a new pupil for riding?”

“She could have her lesson on Sundays—or go without!”

“The customer,” murmured Joanna dryly, “is always right! But, then, there are your dogs?”

A shadow crossed the girl’s face. “Yes, I know.” She looked truculently at Joanna. “You suggested
it
.”

“
I realize that. But when I did so I’m afraid I hadn’t thought of the practical difficulties either. I’m sorry, Shuan. But—would you care to tell m
e
why you’ve suddenly decided that you want to take up the idea?”

“It’s—oh, it’s because of—of you and
R
oger
!”

There was a charged silence. Then
:

“What about—Mr. Carnehill and me?” asked Joanna.

“Well—since you’ve come he—he doesn’t want me any more. I’ve tried to pretend to myself that he still likes me to do things for him and be with him when you’re not. But it isn’t any good. He is always quoting you and
—
well, I suddenly decided that I couldn’t bear it any more! And when I told him about what you’d said about my getting a job in Dublin he said he thought it was a grand idea and why didn’t I. So then I knew it wasn’t any good going on trying!”

Joanna said quietly: “This is going to be an impertinence, Shuan. Don’t answer if you’d rather not. But—do you care for Mr. Carnehill very much?”

Beneath the deep shadow of her lashes Shuan’s eyes were very bright. “Yes—terribly,” she said.

“Then—if I were you I wouldn’t consider going to Dublin or anywhere else while he is ill. There are still heaps of things you can do for him. And you could get out of your head the idea that I am more important to him than you or anyone else w
h
o wants to see h
im
get well as soon as possible. If he ‘quotes’ me it’s because I’m trained to do some things better than you could hope to. You—you
waste
yourself in jealousy, Shuan. Together could work for him!”

“But he doesn’t
want me
any more!”

Joanna
shook
her head, half in exasperation, half in pity. “He’ll learn to want you less if you run away!” she declared. She felt suddenly weary, as if this struggle against the girl’s convictions had drawn all virtue out of her.

Shuan was saying slowly: “You think he does need me a bit, after all?”

“As much,” said Joanna tiredly, “as he needs anyone outside himself. But it will be he who will cure himself in the end.”

Something of her weariness must have showed in her face, for Shuan stood up abruptly. She said: “All right. I’ll go now. And if I can do anything for Roger—anything at all!—I’ll stay.” She hesitated, made a movement as if to hold out her hand to Joanna, but thrust it into the pocket of her dressing-gown instead. At the door she turned, said “Thank you” with an air of its having been dragged from her, and was gone.

Afterwards Joanna sat on, resting her head in her hand and letting tiredness flow over her. She was thinking: “So she does love him in the way I hoped, after all. It seemed to shine in her eyes when she said she cared for him. Mrs. Kimstone was wrong when she said they were taking each other for
granted and that there wasn’t any question of ‘love’ between them. And I’m glad, for I wanted it to be like that for them—
didn’t I
!”

When they met next morning there was an air of awkward diffidence about Shuan which Joanna felt she understood. She knew how confidences, freely given overnight, could appear as monstrous indiscretions next day. So she kept her own conversation cool and casual, and soon after breakfast she had something else to think about
—
Dr. Beltane telephoned to say that Roger was to go for his new treatment into a Dublin nursing home immediately.

“He’ll travel by ambulance and you’ll go with him, Nurse,” were his instructions. “He’ll be there for a few days and you won’t be wanted during that time, of course. I dare say you’ll make arrangements to get back to Carrieghmere the same evening?”

“Yes, I shall,” agreed Joanna as she prepared to take from the doctor his further instructions as to Roger’s care before and during the journey.

Roger himself took the news more philosophically than she had hoped. Mrs. Carnehill was frankly glad and confident, and it was Shuan, Joanna found, who needed comfort and constant reassurance that Roger would be “all right.” She stood about, her hands thrust into the pockets of her jeans and wearing an air of would-be nonchalance. But her eyes were pathetic, and at last Roger, giving way to a flurry of irritation, was driven to expostulate.

“For pity’s sake, Shuan, don’t
haunt
so!” he exclaimed. “Talk about a Banshee at a wedding—!”

At that, Shuan left the room abruptly, and Joanna was shocked at the hurt behind her eyes. Poor Shuan! She was learning that the price of loving could be high.

Roger said defensively: “Shuan wants to give too much!”

“It’s a good fault, surely?” murmured Joanna.

“Yes, but
—
Well, I only know that she makes
me feel more helpless than I am.”

“I daresay, when you—when you’re very fond of someone it’s difficult to avoid the ‘giving’ process,” said Joanna slowly.

“I suppose so. But Shuan and I should understand each other better by now. She should know that there are things she can’t give me or share with me. She can’t do my living for me—I wouldn’t ask that she should try.” His lips set in a stubborn line and Joanna thought: “He means what Mrs. Kimstone hinted at—that he won’t offer Shuan anything until he has something more to give her than he has now. What proud fools men are!” And when she answered him quietly:

“That still doesn’t prevent her wanting to ‘do your living for you,’ as you call it,” she wanted to cry to him instead:

“Don’t you see that if a woman loves enough she
must want
to give all that and more? That in love there’s no such thing as ‘giving too much’? You must give all you have and still feel shamed by the utter poverty of it? Don’t you see—?”

She came back to reality to realize that Roger was regarding her shrewdly.

He said: “A man has got to work out his own destiny. No one—least of all a woman—can do it for him. Tell me, Joanna, did you ever make the mistake of trying?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps—I’ve wanted to.”

Roger’s eyebrows went up and his mouth lifted in a half-smile. “ How unwise of you!” he mocked. “And who was the victim? The young man in London
—
Dale somebody
—
the hydrogen-bomb specialist?”

Joanna laughed, accepting gratefully his lighter mood. “No
—
and he isn’t a hydrogen-bomb specialist!”

“Well—perhaps it was an earlier flame of yours
—
or a later?”

“It was neither. It was for someone I didn’t know very well at the time. So that only made it a double impertinence, didn’t it?”

He looked at her seriously again now. “I don’t know,” he said slowly. “I’ve got a feeling that a man might accept much from you, Joanna. You would give
—
but you’d never thrust. Once
—
a little while ago
—
I asked you to help me. I’d never heard myself doing that to anyone else!”

Joanna said: “But why shouldn’t you? It’s what I’m here for.” And could not tell him that it was his own destiny she had longed to influence
—
his and Shuan’s
—
when she had willed last night that they at least should know the heights and the depths and all the sharp realities of the thing called love.

The nursing home to which Roger was taken was just off St. Stephen’s Green in the heart of the city, and when Joanna had left him there she walked out into the tree-lined square, meaning to find her way down to Grafton Street and O’Connell Street of which she had heard so much, before taking a train for her return to Carrieghmere.

But as she was crossing the road, being absorbed in the sights about her, there was a sudden scream of car-brakes, and Justin McKiley’s luxurious car pulled in to the curb as she reached it.

He said without ceremony: “Do you usually treat buses in that high-handed fashion?”

Joanna looked guiltily after the vehicle in question. “I didn’t see it,” she admitted. “I wasn’t expecting it, and I was watching the policeman on point-duty.”

“Tch! Tch! You shouldn’t speak of them as
police.
They are our Civic Guards!”

Joanna laughed. “Oh, I’m sorry!
And
for getting in your way if you wanted to pass the bus—”

“I didn’t,” said McKiley easily. “I was making for the Shelbourne to get a drink. What about lunching with me there?”

Joanna hesitated. “I was going back to Carrieghmere early this afternoon,” she said.

He brushed aside the objection. “Ah, what’s the hurry? You
came
in with Roger, didn’t you? Well then, lunch with me; I’ll give you a glimpse of the city afterwards, and you’ll drive down to Carrieghmere with
me
later on. How’s that?”

“I must phone Mrs. Carnehill,” said Joanna firmly. “She’ll want to hear how Mr. Carnehill stood the journey.”

“Well, you can do that from the Shelbourne. It’s just here.”

Joanna gave in, and presently they were seated opposite to each other in the dining-room of the hotel. After lunch they drove in a leisurely way about the city while Justin pointed out things of interest and the places where history had been made at the time of the Rebellion and ‘the troubles’ of forty or so years back.

Then in the late afternoon the nose of the car was turned to the south-west and the flat white ribbon of road which would take them back to Carrieghmere.

Joanna was content not to talk but to watch the unfamiliar countryside. However, after a long silence her companion said suddenly:

“Well, how d’you like the job now?”

“As much as I expected,” was Joanna’s even reply.

He laughed. “H’m. Not giving away much, are you? You mean you find the young man’s moods and caprices—bearable?”

“Do you mind,” asked Joanna quietly, “if we don’t discuss my patient ?”

“Sorry.” His tone was amused, indifferent. “But may I remind you that at the Dower House the other day you began a discussion of him with me!”

“Yes. That was different. It wasn’t personal.”

“Neither was this meant to be personal with regard to him. It was personal—about you.”

“Well, will you take it that I find my case a very satisfactory one and that I’m not involved personally at all?”

“Not at all? D’you know, I find that difficult to believe. Frequently tiresome as I find Roger myself, he has some appeal to the female of the species, surely?”

“I don’t know. I never thought about it. I’m merely his nurse.”

Justin shrugged his shoulders. “And you are not discussing your patient? All right. This is where we came in
.
Now what about a gesture of friendliness in place of the frozen mitt? Come along to the Dower House to an impromptu party of mine this evening?”

“I’m in uniform
—”

His eyes mocked hers. “Yes. We’ve discussed the implications of that before, too. Remember? But I dare say you’ve got a rag or two besides?”

“Should I have time to change?”

“Of course. I’ve got some people coming out from Dublin, but they won’t be there before seven, and we shall be back long before that. Will you come?”

Joanna had thought already of the anti-climax of the return to Carrieghmere to dine with Mrs. Carnehill and a morose Shuan and to have no particular duties of her own until Roger’s return.

So she said: “I must see Mrs. Carnehill first. But if she can spare me for a little while—yes, I’ll come.”

“You will, so? Good. Then I’ll expect you.”

As she was changing, later on, Joanna realized that this would be her first social occasion since she had come to Eire. She remembered her early shock at sight of Tulleen and how she had wondered how one “stepped out”—if one wanted to. Oddly enough, since coming to Carrieghmere she had not seemed to have time to miss cinemas, shops, or people.

When she had suggested to Mrs. Carnehill that she should go to the Dower House and had consulted the older woman on what she ought to wear, Mrs. Carnehill, pleased at being asked, said:

“Well, Justin’s parties aren’t like the kind we used
to have regularly on the estate before Roger
—
Everyone dancing to the fiddles, and the food passing round, and more than a drop of whisky, I’m afraid. But Justin will have ultra-smart people. There’ll be cocktails and a lot of talk and not much food. Now if I thought we could anyhow get dinner on to the table before you go
—”