Busman's Holiday, page 4
‘Watch it, honey!’ He grabbed from me the flourishing Monster. ‘Crown my defenceless head if you must!’ he teased. ‘But don’t decapitate this poor thing in the process!’
Confused, I muttered, ‘Sorry Monster.’
‘What did you call me?’
My explanation evoked a wicked grin. ‘That’s a relief! I was afraid you might still be sore at me for returning your clout with a kiss.’
That raised my chin. ‘I told you I didn’t mean to clout you and ‒ and ‒ I’d still rather have had a clout back. I just don’t like being kissed by ‒ by anybody!’
I expected him to hit back, harder. Instead, he took the ground from under me. ‘Quite right. Nor should you.’ He stacked the plant then faced me. ‘I’m sorry I kissed you. It was a mistake I’d never have made had I not been light-headed for a variety of reasons ‒ and that’s an explanation, not an excuse. There’s never any excuse for any adult returning infantile behaviour in kind. As I did, I apologise most sincerely. I hope you can believe that.’
I thought of Sue Frampton’s sweet face. Would she believe him? Probably. I had never seen Bart’s wife, but when he finally admitted she existed at our last, hideous, date, he said she always believed him. Once, I had done the same. Once I had believed that when a man said he was sorry, he meant it. Once, was only a few months back ‒ when I had been another girl in another blindly trusting life.
‘Sure,’ I said, ‘forget it.’
He shot me such a keen glance that I had a kind of electric shock. Why hadn’t I noticed before the high-powered quality of the intelligence in his eyes and face?
‘Good thing I slept well last night, Frances.’
I breathed out, relieved he had changed the subject. ‘Big help with all the driving ahead.’
‘And also with one’s self-control. People who refuse to accept genuine apologies irritate me as much as those who hit first and ask questions, second. We all have our problems.’ He frowned at the open boot. ‘That’s as much as it’ll take.’
Nervously, I said, ‘I hope it won’t be too much of a load for your new car.’
‘Going to offer to walk to lighten it?’
‘No ‒ but ‒ I mean knowing how men love their cars ‒’
‘Honey, please!’ He silenced me with a languid wave. ‘The man in your life may love and cherish his car, but, personally, though I like to look after mine, love is not an emotion I’ve ever been tempted to waste on an inanimate object. He at Martha’s?’ I just shook my head. ‘How old are you? Twenty-three, isn’t it? I seem to remember your aunt mentioning your twenty-first party in her Christmas letter before last.’
‘Yes. I’m twenty-three.’
‘Uh-huh?’ He looked me up and down. ‘Being a very trim little dolly with those absurdly big brown Allendale eyes and that early Beatle fringe hair-do, you look younger. As you’re not and Martha’s must be as loaded with unattached men as Catherine’s or any other London teaching hospital, obviously someone, somewhere, is the man in your life. He moved elsewhere as registrar? Or is he none of my business?’
I had to hedge. ‘Not exactly, is he?’
‘How right you are!’ He shut the boot with a snap as Aunt Joey returned in the garage owner’s car.
I ran to her. ‘How serious?’
‘Neither as extensive nor expensive as you’re thinking, dear, so don’t be so distressed! The repairs will take a couple of days, but the car will be ready for Davie to drive down on Sunday for me, bless him!’ That reminded me of something that had been vaguely puzzling me since discovering David was in medicine. ‘Yes, he said he’d be free to come back up here this weekend.’
‘So wonderfully convenient!’ She hurried off to give him the good news. I followed more slowly. David hadn’t specified his job in Arumchester Hospital to me, nor had I told him I was a senior staff nurse in the general theatre at Martha’s. But from his various remarks on the subject last evening, knowing hospitals and their medical hierarchies, I placed him easily as a paediatric registrar. As easily as I understood how he could be free yesterday and today to compensate for working through the weekend he clearly should have had off. What puzzled me was how, as this was Tuesday, he could be free again this weekend. The three-day week might be coming, but it had yet to reach any British hospital I had heard of. Martha’s residents still thought themselves in luck to get two whole days and nights off every fortnight.
I had to shelve it. Nicky was back with Psmith and our hosts had come out to see us off. Psmith had never been in David’s car, but directly he spotted his rug and Aunt Joey’s overnight bag on the back seat, he leapt in. He adored drives and after settling himself comfortably, sat up and stuck his black nose out of the window to announce he was ready and why were we waiting?
There was one small field between the gate and the empty house and the garden that had been Aunt Joey’s home for so many years. ‘Time to go,’ she said briskly. Then she glanced across the field to her old garden, and it seemed only then did she fully realise she was leaving for ever her cherished rose beds, the flowering currant bushes gay with hanging pink flowers, the tall lilacs still in belated and glorious purple, mauve and white flower, the sweet blue line of forget-me-nots edging the massed glory of the herbaceous borders, the green velvet lawn. The garden had been a wilderness when she took it in hand. She had sown the original grass seed for the lawn, planted every flower, shrub, and even the chestnut tree now higher than the house. It had been a sapling smaller than my six-year-old self when she took it from the hedge and set it in the far corner of the lawn. ‘Time to go,’ she repeated in another voice.
‘Miss Allendale, will you do me a great favour?’
David’s request startled us all.
Aunt Joey turned quickly. ‘Of course! How?’
‘Will you drive the first hour in my place? I’d so enjoy the chance to look around rather than at the Roman road.’
I opened my mouth to offer myself, feeling Aunt Joey would enjoy that too, but his ‘don’t you dare!’ glance kept me silent. Then I caught on. His jumping Aunt Joey into the total concentration driving demands, left her no room for regretting the past, or fearing the future.
He followed me into the back of the car. Psmith was now occupying two-thirds of the seat. ‘Some elderly labradors like more of their share of elbow room than this car allows. Shift up, lad,’ coaxed David, ‘or Frances’ll have to sit on my knees and much as I’d enjoy that, I suspect she’ll prefer a seat to herself.’ He laid his left arm along the seat behind me. ‘How’s that?’
I perched on the edge. ‘Fine, thanks.’
‘Dandy,’ he retorted drily under his breath. ‘Perfect posture for pitching face forward into the windscreen if Miss Allendale has to make an emergency stop.’ He hauled me back to rest against the seat and his shoulder. ‘Even a physician sometimes strays into an Accident Department. One only has to see one girl’s face after pitching through a windscreen to remember what she looked like. Or have you forgotten that one, too?’
I looked at him. ‘I’ve an uncomfortably good memory at times.’
‘Then keep on remembering the only safe posture for back-seat passengers is sitting well back ‒ and relax.’ The impatience in his eyes was replaced by a mocking little smile. ‘Making passes in public isn’t my thing.’
I tried to relax, but as no man had sat cradling me against his shoulder since Bart, I didn’t succeed very well. I left the conversation to Nicky and David. Aunt Joey preferred listening to talking whilst driving, and as those two spoke the same quick-witted language and from sight had struck up an instant friendship, there were no difficult silences.
The subject of his return on Saturday came up. ‘Special date?’ queried Nicky.
‘Very. Sue’s parents are throwing their first big party for her since they moved up north.’
‘Jolly good! I love a big party ‒ hey ‒ David ‒ your boss must be a pushover to give you all this time off!’
He was amused. ‘Can’t say I’ve found him that, but this coming weekend won’t be time off as you mean it. I’m on holiday till Tuesday next week.’
That jolted me into the conversation. My own holiday ended on Monday. ‘But you said just now you’re on duty at nine tomorrow morning?’
‘Yep. And Thursday morning.’
Nicky twisted round. ‘You’ve got to work? On your holiday? Why?’
‘Arumchester Hospital, along with most others in this country, is short-handed.’
‘Even so,’ she protested, ‘doesn’t your boss realise this is busting into your holiday?’ He nodded. ‘The old misery still insists?’
‘Hasn’t any alternative.’ He hesitated, then added slowly, ‘It’s this way, Nicky. I’ve talked about Arumchester Hospital, but actually that is just the largest hospital in the six that make up the Arumchester Hospitals Group. The other five are fairly near by rural standards, which means anything from a few to twenty or so miles apart. It’s difficult enough to try and be in two wards or departments at the same time in a large London hospital, but there the wards will be in walking distance of each other. Much more difficult to cover both with a twenty mile drive between. Patients don’t like waiting, and who blames them? But adult patients, in the overwhelming majority, are incredibly understanding and patient over delays, once the true cause has been explained to them.’ He paused again. ‘Very many of my boss’s patients are under three years old. Possibly you could keep a healthy toddler amused without explaining why he has to wait. Would you care to have to do that to an ill toddler?’ His voice softened unrecognisably. ‘Or one in pain?’ She shook her head, gravely. ‘As my holiday stand-in can’t be available for clinics tomorrow and Thursday and there’s no other locum to do the job, has my boss any alternative?’
‘I guess not ‒ though it still seems tough on you and your girlfriend.’
‘Sue understands ‒ none better. And I’d say both she and her parents’ll enjoy having a little time alone together. It’s some while since she spent her holiday at home ‒’ his smile was affectionate ‘and she is so taken with their new home and Holly Mill.’
‘It’s a cute village. I’m sorry my Charles never saw it. He loves cute, way-out places.’ Nicky’s ‘steady’ Charles Elseworth had already figured largely in the conversation. David now knew nearly as much as Aunt Joey and myself, about Charles’s post-graduate research work at Nicky’s university, his habit of proposing marriage and her determination to remain single until she was thirty and had had time to teach history for some years after getting her degree and a Diploma of Education. ‘What’s so ghastly, is his being so sweet about it. He says he understands and doesn’t mind waiting if that’s all right with me. What can one do with a man like that, David?’
He smiled at her vividly pretty face in its frame of dark curls. ‘Personally, I’d congratulate him warmly for a variety of reasons.’
I saw Aunt Joey smile to herself in the driving mirror.
It was a little after that he curved his left arm round me more closely to look at his watch. Again, I didn’t want to stiffen, I just did, though I realised what he was doing. ‘Are you really so scared of me?’ He murmured just for me to hear. ‘Or just allergic to itinerant physicians?’
My face flamed with anger, not embarrassment. Had he and Bart differed like chalk and cheese, as I had repeatedly heard him acknowledge Sue Frampton as his girlfriend, if I were interested in him, what kind of a girl would I have to be to show it? And what kind of a man was he to try and provoke me into so doing? But that answer I had decided from my first glimpse of him. Bart’s kind.
‘No, I’m not scared!’ I kept my voice very low. ‘I’ve nothing against physicians, in general, but being a theatre girl I must admit I prefer surgeons.’
‘Theatre girl, huh? How nice for all those groovy surgeons,’ he drawled, removed his arm from my shoulders and sat forward. ‘Miss Allendale, as the motorway’s five miles off and you’re only just short of your hour, shall we change now? Give me time to get my eye in before the real traffic starts.’
‘That would be wise, Davie.’
Once at the wheel, he dropped out of the conversation. The motorway traffic was very heavy and none of us broke his concentration till I had to remind him his hour was up. ‘I’ll carry on a while longer.’
It was his car. ‘If you’re sure?’
‘Quite. Mind?’
Nicky answered for me. ‘Not Fran! She detests motorway driving!’
It could have been that, but I suspected it was more the normal owner-driver’s dislike of being driven in his own car through heavy traffic ‒ and particularly by a girl ‒ that made him insist on driving till he turned off the motorway and drew up in a quiet side lane for our belated lunch.
‘Over half way, Miss Allendale.’ He flexed his shoulders as if they ached. ‘I think we can afford an hour off at least, don’t you?’ Psmith had his own picnic in a separate carrier bag. He watched eagerly but patiently as Aunt Joey unwrapped his bowls, bottle of water, plastic bags of mince and meal, and finally, the large bone wrapped in foil.
David smiled. ‘No wonder you’re such a fine figure of a dog, Psmith!’
After lunch Nicky said she would take Psmith for a short walk.
I jumped up. ‘I’ll take him. I’ve just been a passenger and I’d like to stretch my legs.’ David lay back on the grass verge and locked his hands behind his head, just as under the pear tree yesterday. ‘What it is to be energetic!’
Aunt Joey was relaxing on the rug. ‘Makes me feel shamefully lazy.’
‘Not lazy,’ corrected David, ‘sensible. There’s an old medical maxim Frances’ll know as well as myself: never stand when you can sit, never sit when you can lie ‒ and thus save yourself a coronary thrombosis.’
I knew that, I mused, walking Psmith. Of course, I should have remembered it yesterday ‒ and another medical maxim: commonest conditions are the most common. The most common reason for anyone’s yawning his or her head off, was lack of sleep. I hadn’t remembered either having been too busy remembering other things ‒ but was that such a mistake? Wasn’t one Bart one too many in any girl’s life? I thought so, and having taken an immediate liking to Sue Frampton from my brief glimpse of her yesterday and had that underlined by the kindness she had shown to the Riding family, I sincerely hoped she would never find she had made the same mistake as Bart’s wife. If she did, who could blame her? I had to admit the side David showed Aunt Joey and Nicky, was very pleasant; with that sick child and her parents yesterday, he had been so kind; though not strictly good-looking, even I could see he was an attractive man. When he was with Sue, I doubted he glanced at another girl. Bart never had. The really successful philanderers, I thought bitterly, don’t! Their technique is far too good for that. And too good to be restricted to just one girl, if that girl wasn’t around. David could fairly claim that apart from that kiss, he hadn’t made one pass at me, but I sensed ‒ as most girls can before they’re through their teens ‒ that it would mildly amuse him, were I to give even a hint of encouragement. If I had never known Bart ‒ but I had. Consequently I didn’t want to know David Loftus.
He was making a daisy chain for Nicky when Psmith and I got back. Aunt Joey was smiling over her knitting at a small boy trying to stand on his head on the opposite grass verge. Beside a small family car, his parents and an older boy of about twelve were sitting on rugs. The older boy was frowning at the book he was reading. He didn’t look up when his mother told the little boy to come and sit quietly with Tom.
‘Why’s she keeping on at the poor kid?’ Nicky demanded low-voiced. ‘He’s not doing any harm. What small boy wants to sit quietly on or off a picnic?’
‘I expect that’s why she wants him to sit,’ David murmured choosing another daisy. ‘Don’t look over, but under those baggy jeans, the older lad’s got a walking caliper on his right leg. I saw it when he got out of the car.’
Aunt Joey glanced oddly at David’s bent head. ‘Polio, David?’
‘Could be a number of causes.’ He changed the subject as the smaller boy, after eyeing Psmith, was approaching shyly. ‘Hello. Like dogs?’
The mother answered. ‘He just loves dogs ‒ but he mustn’t worry you! Come back, Ian!’
Aunt Joey called, ‘He won’t worry us and our dog loves children. His name is Psmith, Ian. Psmith ‒ say hello to Ian.’
Psmith made a fan for life with his one parlour trick. He offered his right front paw.
Ian had rough brown hair, a tanned rosy face, two missing front teeth and an enchanted grin. ‘Hello, Smithie! You are a clever, clever dog!’
It was several minutes before David asked casually, ‘Does your brother like dogs?’
Ian all but nodded his head off. ‘We used to have Cora ‒ she was a mixed sort of dog Dad said ‒ but she was ever so clever but she got ever so old and she had to go away, but Dad said we’d have another dog ‒’ he drew a huge breath ‘but then Tom smashed his bike into a lorry and had to go away to the hospital and Dad said we’d have to wait till Tom’s leg gets better as Dad doesn’t have time to look after a new dog and Mam can’t as she has to look after me and Dad and visit Tom up at the hospital ‒ but Tom’s not up the hospital now so Dad’s took the day off work to give us a treat as Tom’s got to go back up the hospital as his leg’s not mended yet and they got to mend it some more ‒ and then we’ll have another dog and I’m going to teach her to say hello like old Smithie!’
‘I’m very sure you will, lad.’ David rose languidly and reached for Psmith’s lead. He looked across the lane. ‘Another lovely day!’
‘Couldn’t be better!’ replied the father. ‘Nice dog you’ve got there.’
‘He is a nice old boy.’ David sauntered across with Psmith and Ian. Tom didn’t raise his eyes from his book, until David was sitting between his father and himself and Psmith was offering him a paw.
