Nurse with a Dream (7 page)

“Timberfold is big enough for two women.”

She laughed at his innocence. “Oh, Guy—I’ve never been married, but even I know that no house is big enough for two women if they don’t agree.”

“Maybe. But whatever happens I shan’t turn old Con out. She’s crazy and bad-tempered, but she knows no other home.”

“You’re right, and I admire you for that. Oh, look—there’s my old friend Black Crag.”

“Do you?”

“Do I what?” She turned to look at him in surprise, and met his eyes. She caught her breath. He was looking at her as if he had caught a glimpse of fairyland. It was a look of adoration, so open that it made her embarrassed and she glanced away quickly.

“You said you admired me. Do you?”

“For your loyalty to Aunt Connie? Yes, I do.” But I don’t envy your wife, she added to herself. Pointing, she added quickly, ‘That
is
Black Crag, isn’t it? How steep it seems. It really is a curious formation.” For some reason she found it hard to keep her voice steady. She had met admiration before, but in this man’s ardent look there was something almost too naked, too revealing.

“I’ll take you to-morrow afternoon. There is a steep climb up the face, and a sheer drop, but from this side the ascent is quite easy.” His voice, too, was rough-edged, but when she thanked him, he smiled in a natural, friendly way. To keep the conversation on an impersonal level she plied him with questions about the Crag.

“Hey, you a rock-climbing fan?” he asked, grin
n
ing. “I’ve done a bit. The crag intrigues me, I just can’t wait to see it.” In fact, though she enjoyed walking in mountains, she did not care at all for rock-climbing. She needed time to think about this big handsome cousin who had come into her life so unexpectedly. He made her pulses race, but whether the sensation was pleasant or not, she had yet to decide.

As they returned to the farm, he touched her arm once or twice, helping her over rough ground. His touch, firm, strong, and warm, thrilled her curiously. Soon—too soon—she would have to decide quite definitely exactly what her relations with this man were to be. They could not remain on cousinly terms for long, that was already obvious. He had claimed her as a “kissing cousin”. What kind of kisses did he mean?

Timberfold kept early hours, and it was still light when Jacqueline found herself in the big bedroom overlooking the wide moor. She opened the window to the warm night, and sat for a while watching the colour fade from the day.

Here, so often, her adored father must have stood, staring at freedom, his young heart hot with injustice, misunderstanding. It was like a dream, being here.

She brought a leather folding frame from her rucksack and held it to the remaining light. It held a laughing snapshot of her father and mother, arms linked affectionately. A faded, dog-eared photograph now, but infinitely precious. The two faces, happy and in love, smiled at her.

“Are you glad Guy and I are friends?” she whispered to them, as she had whispered confidences on many a lonely night. “You’re all together now, you and Saul, Grandmother and Grandfather, with all bitterness gone and only love and understanding left. At least, I hope that’s what Heaven means, darlings. You wouldn’t want the next generation to carry on a feud you’ve forgotten, would you? You want me to bury the hatchet?”

She smiled into the warm dusk. Connie was a queer one, with her admiration for “a big man,” and her fantastic pride in the possession of the old house. And Guy? His size came from the Clarkes, but his handsome looks he must have inherited from his mother, pretty as may-blossom. I’m awfully glad I’m small, from my grandmother’s side, and not one of the “big black Clarkes”. How Connie despises me for my size! I must tell her good things come in little parcels.

She climbed into the high bed and pulled the linen sheet to her chin. It smelt of fresh air and, faintly, of peat. And because she was a woman and women’s thoughts run that way, she wondered if Guy’s children would be as handsome as their father. And what woman would marry Guy and live in this lonely, bitter old house, coax it back into a happy home and rear a brood of pretty children in the great kitchen? Red curtains, it needed, she decided sleepily. Red curtains with a lamp shining behind them, a leaping fire and the smell of baking.

She did not think at all of Alan, who for her sake had slept in a bed too small for him, and wasted a whole morning, when the light was perfect for his needs, in introducing her to her heritage, the moor.

By the time Jacqueline had finished breakfast, Guy came in, declaring he had finished his Sunday-morning chores. “We’ll go to the Bubbling Well this morning. It’s a short walk, and you must make a wish there when the bubbles come up. Guaranteed to come true.”

“That’s right,” Connie said, suddenly talkative. “You walk three times round the pool and the bubbles come up in the water. Wish before they burst, but you have to be quick.”

“Marsh gas,” Guy explained. “Walking round the edge disturbs it and releases it into the water—or so I’m told. Anyway, the wishes come true. Connie wished to be mistress of Timberfold, didn’t you, Con?”

“Aye, my first day here. I always knew it would come true.”

She looked at them both with an expression of sly triumph. “I’ve had other wishes, since yon.”

“And did they come true?”

“Aye. And if they don’t—I
make
them.” She pushed past Jacqueline and peered out of the window. “Yonder’s old Michael. I want a word with him.”

“Good gracious, Guy—what an odd-looking man! He looks like a bundle of old clothes.”

Guy looked over Jacqueline’s shoulder. She was conscious of his nearness. ‘That’s our shepherd—so-called! He’s about as much use as a sick headache. Drunk whenever he can lay his hands on the stuff. He’d sell his soul for a bottle of whisky.”

“He can’t be much use as a shepherd. Why don’t you sack him?”

“You can’t sack folks like Michael. His cottage is on our land and we are responsible for him. He was a fine man, they say, when he first came here. Believe it or not, he was madly in love with Connie. Still is, as far as I know, for he never married. She wasn’t bad-looking as a girl.” He chuckled, “Married or not, I’ll bet Mike thanks God on his knees for a narrow escape.” He watched the couple curiously. “What the deuce is she telling him now? One of her crazy ideas, I’ll be bound. I cured her of interfering with the farm after I came of age, but Michael is her slave. He’d do any daft thing she. told him, bar harming the sheep. He’s sense enough to keep off them, which is a comfort.”

“What do you do with yourself, Guy—I mean when you’re not farming? Isn’t it dull for you?”

“Pictures in Barnbury sometimes, or a dance. They have the odd dance at the Moor Hen. Sometimes,” he grinned mischievously, “I take a girl out—but I’ve never had the luck to find one as attractive as my pretty cousin. May I take you to a dance one day?”

“Thank you. But you know it would be dependent on my time off—and I have to be back strictly on time.”

“I know. You could take me to a staff dance some time; then you wouldn’t be worried by the clock, Cinderella.” The idea pleased her. He would be a wonderful escort, and she had worried a little about the staff dances, knowing the nurses took their own partners, and she knew nobody.

“Guy, I’d love to.”

“It’s a date. Won’t old Debbie be surprised, too?”

“Why? You were going to tell me about Deborah, and we were interrupted. Is she older or younger than you?”

“Older. Tries to do the big sister on me, but it doesn’t work. I
was
going to tell you about Deb, but I’ve changed my mind. I won’t. At least, not yet.”

“Why ever not?”

He laughed, a sound which irritated her vaguely. There was the faintest trace of maliciousness in it. “Because I’ve a sense of humour, my pixie.”

“It doesn’t seem startlingly funny to me.”

“It will, darling—it will. Don’t look so cross. If you’re ready, we’ll start for the Bubbling Well or you’ll miss your wish.”

As they left the house, Connie stumped towards them with a face full of doom. “Michael says there’s some trouble among the sheep up at Miller’s Clough. You’ll have to take Gypsy and get along to ‘em, quick, he says.”

“Drat the old fool! He’s supposed to be a shepherd. Why couldn’t he go? I am taking Jacky to the Well.”

“Not if you’re needed elsewhere. I could walk to the Well by myself—or could I come with you to the sheep?”

Connie was scornful. “He needs to move sharp, Mike says, if he doesn’t want to lose some good animals. You stop here.”

Guy scowled. “What on earth can be wrong? Didn’t he say? Why didn’t he speak to me? You ought to have brought him into the house, Con. I’ve told you before, I won’t have you and that drunken old creature fixing things between you.”

Connie shrugged. “He wouldn’t speak to thee. You shout at him, he says. And you do. T’owd chap’s scared o’ thee.”

He whistled for Gypsy. “Sorry, Jacky. You see what a farmer’s life is? I’ll settle the trouble, and we’ll have our trip to the Black Crag after dinner.”

He strode off. Jacqueline felt lonely, not wishing to spend a whole morning in Connie’s company.

The woman pointed. “Bubbling Well’s yon way. Through the gate and up the hill about half a mile, turn right at a clump of hawthorns. You can’t miss it. Dinner’s at twelve.” She clumped away, clogs clattering on the cobbled yard, and Jacqueline thankfully felt herself free to go off by herself.

It was a day of golden stillness. Down in the town, it would be too hot, enervating. But here there was a faint, tangy drift of air, too light to be called a breeze, which fingered her hair and blew coolly about her ears. After the communal life of Hospital and Nurses’ Home, she enjoyed her solitude. The track went steadily uphill and as she gained height she saw the Crag again. It dominated the scene whichever path one took, but now she saw it from a different angle. She shaded her eyes, trying to estimate its distance, but it was slightly obscured by heat haze.

It seemed that not a fly moved across the whole horizon. She knew there were sheep, but they must be lying down. Somewhere, Alan and Lance Medway would be enjoying their planned trip. Surely more than a day had passed since she walked the sheep tracks behind Alan’s neat, economical moving. How kind he had been, how easy their companionship—as easy as an old shoe! He had helped her, as one human being to another—not as a man gallantly squiring a pretty girl. There had been no excitement, no tingling of the pulses, as in her short walk with Guy. But she had been happy, and her inner loneliness had gone away for a brief time. Alan seemed to understand, without being told, what she was thinking and feeling. He would be a dependable friend in trouble. But no one—not even his best friend—could call him really handsome! She smiled a little, remembering his rangy figure and how she’d thought him an apparition out of the Middle Ages in his green sweater which somehow made him look like Blondin.

On Friday, when she left St. Simon’s, she knew no Englishmen at all. Now she knew two. Alan had come into her life unannounced—smiled, given her a morning’s friendship, and departed. She did not even know his full name. And Guy? She had found him waiting at the end of a long, long journey; true, she had not been expecting him, any more than he had expected her, but it did seem that fate had brought them together. Even the white heather had taken a hand, encouraging her to go forward when the tossed coin said “go back.”

Guy was in her life now, for good or ill. And his being there was her own doing. In some subtle way, the whole pattern of her life had been altered since she left the hospital. For good or ill.

From nowhere, a cooler wind blew across the heather, riffling across her bare arms and turning the smooth tanned skin to goose-flesh, making her shiver. She had reached the Bubbling Well.

It was a dark pool under the shadow of a great grey boulder; a much smaller pool than she had imagined. When she leaned over it, she saw her own face staring up at her, like a girl long drowned in a peat bog. The place was uncanny, and she wished she had waited for Guy.

Walk three times round and wish before the bubbles burst. Better to have one’s wish quite ready, then, for wishes have to be spoken very carefully if they are not to rebound uncomfortably upon the wisher. Think of all those unfortunate people granted three wishes by a fairy who seemed to take a delight in catching them out!

Carefully she paced round and watched breathlessly. Yes, a circle of bubbles rose heavily into the middle of the pool. Gases in the bog—a very simple scientific explanation, suitable for schoolboys. But how much better to think it was magic.

“Please, Well,” she whispered, “let me find my true love—or let my true love find me.”

With a plop, the bubbles burst.

“That’s done—and I think I was in time!” Like most people who have grown up in a lonely childhood, Jacqueline talked to herself sometimes. But, as if her voice had called it, a dog immediately trotted round the boulder which sheltered the well.

“Why, Gypsy!” She held out a hand to the black-and-white animal. “Come on—good girl.”

But the dog turned away from her, and she saw then that it was not Gypsy after all, for there was a large white patch on the shoulder now turned towards her. Gypsy was all black, except for her feet and tail-tip. The patch was curiously like a map of England.