Nurse in Waiting (3 page)

Then Joanna did something which was against all the strict canons of nursing etiquette at the Marrone Nursing Home, and which would have struck horror in Matron’s professional breast.

She said: “Call me Joanna—won’t you?”

CHAPTER
TWO

By
the time
Joanna had changed, had organized a tea-tray for her patient and had learned how she could expect to get it for herself in future, it was nearer to what at the nursing home would be regarded as “settling down” time than an accepted hour for tea. No one, in fact, seemed to expect her to want to offer afternoon tea to her patient, any more than to want it herself.

When at last she took it to his room Roger Carnehill made no refe
re
nce to his earlier outburst.

His eyes ran over her uniform as he said provocatively: “I suppose, now I’m taken over officially, so to speak, I become the patient in bed number so-and-so?”

“Not,” said Joanna patiently, “unless you want it so. As you are my only patient I can give you individual attention!”

He yawned elaborately. “I dare say that could be just as stultifying in the end. Meanwhile, what am I to call you when I don’t say ‘you’?”

Joanna bent over the tea-things. “I expect you will usually call me Nurse,” she said.

“Shall I? I don’t know. I never had one before. What does Mother call you?”

“I asked her to call me Joanna,”

“Joanna?” He repeated the name slowly as if weighing its quality. Then: “Why shouldn’t I do the same? Wouldn’t it make for mateyness all round?”

For an instant blue eyes looked challengingly into grey. Joanna knew that he was trying to bait her into a show of sharp professionalism and knew also that to a certain extent she was gratifying him when she replied briskly:

“If it made for co-operation, it would be quite a good idea. If it didn’
t—”

“If it didn’t, it would merely be familiar of me! Is that it—Joanna?”

Joanna had to laugh as she handed him his teacup. “Call me what you like—or whatever comes first to your mind,” she said easily. “Meanwhile, won’t you tell me about your day? What time you usually wake, what your routine has been?”

He raised his eyebrows. “Oh—d’you mean you’re not going to reorganize it according to some starchy cut-and-dried methods of your own?”

“I can’t promise,” returned Joanna placidly, realizing that the ‘baiting’ process was being tried again. “I may like to suggest some alterations when I’ve spoken to Dr. Beltane. But begin at the beginning—what time
do
you wake?”

“Oh—about seven, I suppose. If I’ve been sleeping, that is. If I haven’t, and Shuan comes too early with the tea, she knows she’ll get slung out on her ear, because I may have just dropped off.”

“So Shuan—I’m afraid I don’t know her other name—brings your morning tea?”

“Ferrall. Shuan Ferrall,” he prompted laconically. “She hauls the dogs in, and some extra saucers, and we all sit round having a cosy conversazione.”

“The dogs? All of them?” queried Joanna with a glance at the three humped bodies beside the bed.

“Not,” returned her patient gravely, “not all seventeen. Only these three. They always come.”

“I see,” said Joanna just as gravely. “And after that, I suppose they spend their day here? Or do they ever feel the need to step outside for a breath of air?”

He laughed. “All right. You win that round! You don’t approve of their being here, do you? I saw you look down your nose at them when you came in with Mother. Well—you’ll have to fight Shuan about that. They’re her animals; she believes I adore having ‘em around, and I wouldn’t disillusion her for the world
—”

He broke off as swift footsteps sounded in the hall outside, and the door opened with a clatter of its handle.

Joanna looked up to see a girl—Shuan Ferrall, no doubt—standing upon the threshold.

She wore
jodhpurs
, a clumsily darned fawn jumper and a short jacket shrugged across her shoulders. She was hatless, and her black hair, dishevelled by the wind, made a tangle of curls in her neck. Her cheeks were flushed to a high color, and Joanna, looking at her, realized that greenish-blue eyes deeply set beneath dark curling lashes could indeed appear to have been ‘smudged in’ by a careless hand.

For a second Shuan stood there. Then in one convulsive movement she flung herself across the room, bent over Roger Carnehill and kissed him upon the lips.

“
Darling
!”
she exclaimed. “What do you think—?”

Unceremoniously he set the tips of his fingers at the roots of her hair where it sprang upward from her brow, and held her back from him.

“I don’t,” he said. “Your volatility would disturb anybody’s thought-processes. If it’s affectation or nerves, or both—check it. It grows on you. Speak nicely to Miss Merivale now.”

She flicked him lightly upon the cheek.

“Beast,” she commented briefly.

Her violent embrace of Roger had dislodged her jacket. It had fallen at the feet of Joanna, who now handed it to her with a smile.

She smiled back a little uncertainly.

“Oh—you are Roger’s nurse!” she said. “I ought to have known, but I didn’t expect you until tomorrow. None of us did, did we, Roger?” As she turned to appeal to him her eyes lighted upon the tea-tray.

“Why, you’ve got tea!” she accused. “Whatever for? Didn’t you eat your lunch?” She looked curiously from him to
J
oanna and back again, and Roger said with a glance of his own towards Joanna:

“Apparently it’s an old English custom. Over there, four o’clock tea is something of a rite, I understand!”

“But it isn’t four o’clock! It’s nearer six!”

“That,” Roger pointed out—and Joanna had an uncomfortable feeling that he was talking ‘at’ her, rather than ‘to’ Shuan—
“
is not the fault of our charming new English broom! We didn’t lunch until two-forty-five or so.”

“Well, I didn’t lunch at all. I looked in at Mikey Mo’s quoits stall and I spent more than I meant to, throwing for a powder-bowl I wanted to give to Mums. That’s what I call Mrs. Carnehill,” she explained with rapid politeness to Joanna. “But whenever I nearly got the range of it, Mikey began to say, ‘Arrah, the divil take this dust’, and he went round flicking everything with a piece of rag and managing to move the bowl a bit farther away. So I d
i
dn
’
t really have enough money left for lunch; I bought some chocolate and ate it on the way home. But I’m still starving. Pass me a biscuit, Roger—th
e
re’s a dear!”

She munched greedily and then said again: “What do you think? Wait now, till I tell you! I’ve
t
old the whole of Bambino’s next litter—when it arrives
!
”

“Who to?” asked Roger ungrammatically.

“That woman-breeder from Athlone who bought the others. She was in Naas today, and I met her.”

She stirred one of the dogs on the floor ge
n
tly with her foot.

“Be an angel, Bambina, and produce a lot!” she urged.

Again Roger Carnehill glanced obliquely at Joanna, a look which she caught, but which for the moment she did not understand. It was with a kind of impish provocation that he said meaningly:

“Maybe Bambina will, maybe she won’t. The even tenor of her way is likely to be upset. At any minute now she may be dismissed from the presence!”

Shuan had knelt in order to caress the dog’s silky golden ears. But at his words she looked up sharply. “Dismissed? What do you mean? What has she done?”

He shrugged his shoulders and threw another significant glance in Joanna’s direction.
“
I’m
not dismissing her!” he said.

The girl’s look of inquiry shifted too, while a dark flush rose slowly from her throat to her face.

“But Bambina is always allowed in here
,”
she protested. “So are the other two. Have you said they are not to come any more?”

For a moment or two Joanna did not reply. She felt puzzled, and she was annoyed with her patient for having twisted this barb of irritation from something she had not said. Perhaps this was indeed evidence of the ‘black mood’ dreaded by his mother. If so, as she herself had assured the older woman, it was no more than a sick man’s caprice and must be dealt with accordingly. So, as equably as she could, she said:

“
I’ve
given no orders about the dogs!”

“But you’ve wanted to! Your first impression was—quite obviously—
‘
Too much furniture. Too much dog.’ Wasn’t it, now?” challenged Roger.

Aware that her first thoughts had indeed been along such lines, Joanna still managed to say evenly: “I didn’t realize that I was so transparent, and first impressions aren’t always to be relied upon,
a
re they? In any case, I haven’t any authority to give orders, except under Dr. Beltane’s instructions.”

Shuan was looking from one to the other bewilderedly.

“Well, Beltie knows all about the dogs,” she put in defiantly. “They’ve always been here when he has come to see Roger. Surely you don’t mean to put it into his mind now that they oughtn’t to come in—that they’re unhealthy or anything!”

Calmly Joanna held out her hand for Roger’s cup, set it on the tray which she picked up. As she turned towards the door she smiled at Shuan, deliberately leaving Roger out.

“Do believe that I’ve said nothing at all about the dogs being here or not,” she said in a conciliatory tone. “Mr. Carnehill knows that quite well. I daresay he is only teasing.”

But there was no answering smile from the girl. She looked hurt and apprehensive—far more so than the little misunderstanding warranted. It was as if she had suddenly seen Joanna as an intruder, as a threat to some way of life or habit which she treasured. At a gesture from Roger she moved over to open the door for Joanna, but she said nothing at all.

Outside, Joanna was surprised to find that her hands holding the tray were trembling very slightly.

She disliked scenes and was inclined to blame herself completely for any which involved a patient. But
had
the one which had just passed been in any way her fault? Surely not. It had been Roger Carnehill who had used his too-keen perception to bait her upon some dictatorial attitude which she had been careful to avoid, but against which he was overready to defend himself in advance. He had deliberately created that ‘brush’ of hostility between her and the younger girl!

She began to think about Roger Carnehill, being caught into the interest of him as a ‘case’, and being anxious, out of her newly awakened liking and admiration for his mother, to do her very best by him.

She was going to succeed with him—she must! But first of all she must get his co-operation. Was he going to give that easily—or not?

Before she went back to the sickroom she rang up Dr. Beltane’s Tulleen number.

He answered the telephone himself, inquired briskly about her journey and when she had arrived, and then said:

“Frankly, I’m glad you are there, Nurse. I think we may see some improvement in the patient now. But I warn you—he may need handling. Part of his difficulty is psychological as much as physical, I suspect. But I’ll be over at Carrieghmere in the morning. I’ll talk to you then.”

“Thank you. Doctor,” replied Joanna. “I’m afraid I am rather in the dark as to the history of his case. Mrs. Carnehill seemed to imply that he gets depressed and moody.”

“Yes. he does. I tell you—he wants handling. Any difficulties so far?”

“No—none,” hedged Joanna. “I’m going back to him now—to make him ready for the night.”

“Good. Well, I’ll see you in the morning, Nurse. Goodbye.”

She returned to Roger to find that Shuan was no longer with him. He was reading and did not at first look up when she began to move about, doing some deft and unobtrusive tidying of the room.

But when she had finished and turned round to ask him about the making of his bed she found that his eyes were upon her.

She put her question, and he replied laconically:

“Shuan and Cook—being the sturdiest members of the household—usually do it between them. If you yank twice at that bell-rope someone will come. It’s a recognized signal.”

He watched her find the bell-rope and pull it. Then he said;

“Don’t you think I paved the way rather well—for the ultimate dismissal of Bambina and Co., I mean?”

“If that was your object, I think you did it extraordinarily clumsily,” retorted Joanna briskly. “You upset Miss Ferrall quite unnecessarily.”

“But you mean them to go, don’t you?
Don’t
you?” he persisted.

“I certainly don’t think that three dogs of that size are suitable as permanent inhabitants of a sickroom,” Joanna admitted. “But
—”

“But you meant to go about their dismissal oh so tactfully and quietly! Almost so that no one would realize they had gone—until they had! But I warned you that you would have to fight Shuan about it—”