Promise the Doctor (18 page)

‘I think we ought to be leaving,’ he said briefly, helping Aileen into her coat. ‘Sorry I haven’t had a drink with you on that so-called celebration of yours, Bill, but I’ll have to see what can be done about it first. Too many of my plans have been upset since Muriel Barnes left Fernbank to Sister Benyon,’ he said darkly, but Bill interrupted.

‘Pete put out a very good suggestion about the development of the other site down by the pier,’ he was beginning, but Sam was in no mood to listen.

‘Save it for a board meeting,’ he suggested. ‘Not the one where you propose this ... stranger, either! See you in the morning.’ And before Aileen and Mary Lowe could, as they had both intended to do, make plans to meet again, he had swept her before him and out of the restaurant into the car.

Aileen was silent. She could think of nothing to say which might be of any help. She knew what it must mean to a man who had enjoyed having all his own way for such a long time to be set at bay by a slip of a girl like Joy, then to have his daughter-housekeeper suddenly embark on a career of her own, a career such as she had always wanted, where she could be of service to an unknown number of people throughout her working life.

As if that were not enough, she thought as the car drew up at the gates of Fernbank, Beryl was not to marry his son and unite the two business partners and their families as Sam had hoped she would.

‘I ...’ she began as she turned to get out of the car, but Sam gave her a grim smile.

‘Don’t worry, love,’ he said with rough gentleness, ‘none of this is between you and me. God willing, nothing ever will be. But’—his anger was not gone and there was a glimpse of it in the hand which smote the steering wheel—‘I’ll have to break my word. I promised your daughter I’d never mention Fernbank to you again, and I’m doing that right now. Tell her, tell her from me,’ he said emphatically, ‘that I refuse to be flouted at every turn of the wheel,’ and before Aileen could think of any words in which to answer him, the engine roared into life and he was gone.

CHAPTER XVIII

When Joy and Quentin returned to Fernbank it was to discover a distressed Aileen had arrived home some three quarters of an hour or so before them. Lana, surprising everyone by her competent direction of affairs, had asked Jenny to brew a pot of strong, sweet tea and tried in vain to persuade her mother to take two of the small tablets Quentin had left her for relief of pain.

‘I don’t want or need anything,’ Aileen insisted again, quite quietly but very firmly when Quentin and Joy tried to persuade her to take them. ‘I’m perfectly all right. Sam is the person we should all be worrying about.’

‘I’m afraid I can’t possibly do that, not right at the moment,’ Joy returned. ‘I think he has only himself to blame if he makes himself ill by his bad temper. What on earth he means by saying he’s being “flouted” goodness only knows. I’m only keeping my word to Miss Barnes, and because it helps all of us to stay here! It’s only because he can’t bear not to have everything his own way that he goes off like this. A spoiled child has exactly the same reaction.’

‘Except that Sam Bainbridge isn’t exactly a child,’ Quentin muttered, wishing he had his bag with him and could have given Aileen something to calm her nerves. Not that she appeared to be in need of anything, he was bound to admit. For the first time he was seeing the Aileen who had brought up her family unaided, coped with crises of all descriptions without turning a hair, just as she was apparently doing at this moment. ‘Where’s Michael?’ he added, looking round.

‘He went off with Pete and Beryl to look at a house they’ve seen in another part of the town,’ Lana told him composedly, ‘and he said he was going to have an early night.’

‘Maybe just as well, from what your mother says,’ Quentin commented, thinking it might give Sam time to cool down a little if he saw nothing of his son that evening. ‘This isn’t exactly the time to invite more trouble ... it’s a good thing we didn’t ask them to join us and listen to your suggestion,’ he added to Joy.

‘What suggestion?’ She looked up from the sandwiches she and Emma, at the latter’s suggestion, were compiling to ‘fortify’ everyone, as Emma phrased it. Emma, Joy often smiled, always flew to food of some description in any family crisis, and she had to admit it often helped. ‘Using the attics we’ve closed up, you mean?’ she defined. ‘That’s done with,’ she said firmly. ‘I wouldn’t give him the right to enter a dog kennel on the premises, even if we had one.’

‘That isn’t like you, darling,’ Aileen protested, but half-heartedly, and Joy’s response was the instant smile her mother could always call to her lips, and when she spoke it was in a less indignant tone.

‘I know,’ she said, but still firmly, ‘but that isn’t the point. He gave me his word that he wouldn’t mention Fernbank to you again, and see what’s happened? He sends a message to say “he won’t be flouted at every turn of the wheel” ... well,’ she banged down the last of her pile of sandwiches on to those already on the plate and looked defiantly at Aileen, ‘this time he’s gone too far. I was prepared to compromise, to help if I could. Now I won’t budge an inch. He can do what he likes,’ she said briefly, ‘bring bulldozers and all the rest of his mechanical equipment if he wants to, and I expect he will if he’s going to put in that private bathing pool for the village as he says he is, but I won’t give way an inch, not an inch!’ she repeated firmly, ‘upsetting you again like this!’

‘You should get angry more often, Joy,’ Lana said surprisingly. ‘It suits you, doesn’t it, Quentin? Look at her colour, and the sparkle in her eyes! Quite a change from the calm, collected Sister we’re accustomed to seeing.’

‘She always looks attractive,’ Quentin said gallantly, ‘but I doubt whether her patients would want to see their Sister Benyon with the light of battle in her eyes! There’s a time and a place for everything, Lana, and I quite agree with you, it’s high time Joy stopped letting everyone walk over her, use her, and got round to standing up—just a little—for her rights as an individual! After all,’ he took a sip of his tea, and it seemed to Joy his eyes were mocking her over the rim of his cup, an idea which would have appalled Quentin had he known what was racing through her mind, ‘if you hope to end up as a Matron one day, and that’ll be the next step if you get a post as Assistant somewhere, you’ll often find yourself doing battle for the rights of your nurses, things you’ll want changing and developing and all manner of things! You might as well get used to the idea.’

‘Assistant Matron? Matron somewhere? But I thought...’ Lana was beginning, but Quentin interrupted her so hastily that for a moment Joy wondered what her sister
h
ad been about to say which he was so obviously intent upon preventing her from saying.

‘All in the lap of the gods, Lana my child,’ he said quietly. ‘One doesn’t talk of these things.’

‘But one
does
talk of the Samuel Bainbridges of this world and how one can best help them,’ Aileen put in quietly. ‘What was this idea of yours you were going to put to him, Joy? Wouldn’t you like to tell me about it?’

It did not take long to explain the scheme Joy had thought might help bring a little easement of the situation between Sam Bainbridge and the people of Fernbank, but even though she listened to the end, Aileen shook her head when Joy had finished.

‘I’m sorry, pet,’ she said sadly, ‘but somehow I don’t think it would work out half so well as you anticipate. I don’t think Sam is really bothered about possessing Fernbank for his staff and so on, not now. He was, in the beginning, and it certainly seemed a good idea, but he’s a strange man. The mere idea that you
opposed
him from the very beginning seems to have made him all the more determined. He isn’t accustomed to opposition, you see, not from anyone.’

‘He can’t force me to sell,’ Joy said sadly, ‘or I know he would have lost no time in doing so. I know there’s nothing he
can
do about it. I went to see Mr. Belding the other day,’ she confided suddenly. ‘I was so disturbed. I didn’t want you’—she smiled at Aileen—‘to be upset all over again, but he assured me there was nothing Sam Bainbridge could do, no step he could take he hadn’t tried when Miss Muriel was alive. That, Mr. Belding said, was why she had left the place in my care. It made me feel whatever happened I should ... sort of keep faith with her.’

‘I couldn’t agree more, darling,’ Aileen smiled back at her daughter. Quentin, watching them, decided she was the least upset of either of them. ‘Don’t worry about me,’ she said firmly. ‘I know Sam loves me, wants me to marry him, but he’ll have to learn the way to win any woman’s heart isn’t to trample on those who’ve already got a claim on her affections...’

She broke off abruptly, and before Joy could make any response as a furious knocking sounded on the front door. Quentin and Pete looked at one another, and Eric Wrenshaw got to his feet.

‘I’ll go,’ he said quietly. ‘After all, it’s part of my job. Sounds to be someone in trouble.’

They heard him go along the hall, and both young men were not far behind him, while the womenfolk looked at each other, wondering who on earth would come knocking at their door at this hour of the night. They were not left long in suspense. Eric returned in a few moments, with Michael, a strangely dishevelled Michael, following closely on his heels.

‘Sorry to come barging back at this hour of the night, Mrs. Benyon,’ he apologized. ‘I know I ought to have gone to one of the hotels in town, but I felt I had to talk to someone who understood. I’ve had a fearful row with Dad,’ he confessed. ‘He said I wasn’t to come round here any more, and that Cara wasn’t to come either, when she gets any free time. He’s got to learn we’re neither of us children to be told what to do and where to go, not any longer. I’ve left the firm and everything to do with it. I shall telephone the London firm who were asking for Civil Engineers willing to go to Nigeria, first thing tomorrow morning,’ he concluded.

‘Have you had anything to eat lately?’ Joy was surprised by her sister’s calm, practical tone. Usually she thought of Lana as an onlooker at life, or at least an inactive participant. Now she was seeing for herself that there was more of a change in Lana than she had realized. ‘I know you didn’t have time for any dinner,’ Lana went on. ‘You told me yourself you worked right through on the new scheme for that specially difficult bridge.’

‘I ... no.’ Michael capitulated so abruptly the situation was almost comical. ‘I don’t think I’d have said half the things I
did
say if I hadn’t been so hungry,’ he confessed. ‘But I’d been along to the kitchen to see what I could coax out of Cook, and found she and the maid had packed their cases and left on the late train. Seems they’d already had words with Father, because he said some unkind things when he told them
he
wouldn’t come back and work with them.’

‘In his customary tactful fashion, I suppose,’ Lana said softly. ‘Jenny, have we anything we can give Michael to make a decent meal?’

‘There’s steak in the fridge,’ Jenny offered, ‘and some of that tomato soup I made this morning. I can do a few vegetables or some french fried potatoes.’

‘The steak will do fine, Jenny, thank you very
much,’ Michael told her. ‘Don’t make a fuss. Just a little something will do ... and a bed for the night, if you’ll be so kind. I shall have to go round to the Mount first thing in the morning and collect the rest of my things. I just flung a few odds and ends into the car and ... came.’

‘You did quite right,’ Lana told him, ‘didn’t he, Mother? That’s what friends are for, isn’t it? To turn to in time of trouble, I mean.’

‘We’ll do all we can,’ Joy was beginning, but she too was looking at Aileen, remembering that the man who was Michael’s father was also the man who wanted to marry her mother! ‘Where was your father when you left him, Michael?’ she asked. ‘Was he all alone?’

‘I left him in his study,’ Michael said briefly. ‘He’ll be all right. He often stays there until the small hours of the morning, thinking things out, he says. I must admit he’s had some pretty useful ideas during his midnight sessions ... but I’d like to bet he won’t have any flashes of inspiration this time!’

‘If you’ll all excuse me,’ Aileen said suddenly, rising and taking up her bag and other things from the low table where she had been sitting, ‘I’ll go up and lie down for a little while. Give me those tablets now, will you, Lana, please. I don’t want any of you to disturb me. I’ll take these and try to get some rest. Things may look better in the morning.’

They watched her go, and as Joy went across and kissed her mother goodnight she felt an unexpected lump in her throat. It wasn’t fair, she thought fiercely. Aileen and her second love should be as happy as any youthful lovers, they had everything’ they could wish for, looking at the matter from a strictly material angle, that was. Why, oh, why did people’s emotions have to enter so deeply and so fiercely into the most commonplace things of life, complicating everything for everyone, whether it was their own doing or not?

‘I’ll look in when I come up, love,’ she offered, but Aileen shook her head, smiling so that Joy might be deceived into thinking she was no longer upset.

‘I’d rather you didn’t disturb me, if you don’t mind,’ she said with a firmness she had not used since they were children. ‘I shall be quite all right.’ At the door she turned and spoke to Michael. ‘I think you’ll be comfortable in the room next to Pete’s,’ she told him. ‘I hope you too think things may be brighter in the morning.’

‘I hope so, Mrs. Benyon,’ Michael said politely. ‘Heaven knows I didn’t want to quarrel with Dad. We never have before, simply because I’ve always given in to whatever he’s wanted. But this time I just wasn’t having any. Nothing short of a miracle is going to make any difference this time, I’m afraid.’

‘Then we must hope for a miracle, that’s all,’ Aileen said quietly. ‘Goodnight, everyone.’

She went quickly and quietly upstairs and to her own room, but she put the two tablets safely away, for she had no intention whatsoever of using them. She had plans of her own, and she did not intend any of the family or their friends to interfere.

‘I’ll make him listen to me,’ she told herself as she changed into a warm jersey and skirt and repowdered her nose. She hesitated a moment before applying a fresh coat of lipstick, but the choice of a brighter shade than she normally wore gave her the feeling of having nailed her colours to the mast!

‘If it means
we
quarrel too,’ she told her reflection, ‘at least it’s better to happen now than if we decided to marry! It would be too late then to try and convince him he couldn’t bully me into doing whatever he wanted, whether it was against my principles or not!’

She crept downstairs, her handbag under her arm. There was a taxi rank at the end of the shore road, and there would not be many other people requiring a cab at this hour of the night. She was right in her assumption. The rank, save for two drivers dozing at the wheels of their cars, was deserted, and in next to no time she was seated in the first one, being driven to the Mount.

The driver was curious. In common with everyone else in Vanmouth he knew this large, somewhat ostentatious house was the home of Mr. Samuel Bainbridge, the millionaire, or so gossip had it, who was planning to rebuild the town to suit his own ideas.

‘Shall I wait, ma’am?’ he asked as he opened the door. ‘Don’t appear to be anybody at home so far as I can see.’

‘Yes, please wait,’ Aileen instructed him. ‘I’ll not be many minutes.’

She went up the wide steps and rang the bell. There was no light to be seen anywhere, but when she tried the door it opened at her touch. For a moment she hesitated, then the taxi-driver was beside her, plainly having watched what had happened and guessed she was distressed.

‘I’ll come in with you, if you’d like me to, ma’am,’ he told her, and, suddenly afraid, Aileen nodded dumbly, walking into the wide hall and down the first corridor she came to, switching on every available light as she passed the switches.