Tabitha in Moonlight (12 page)

She laid down her pen at length and went to do her last round. Jimmy had gone, of course; she would be going to his wedding soon. The man in his bed was middle-aged and a little aggressive and she missed Jimmy's cheerful face; it would be nice to see him married, though. She had bought a new hat for the occasion, a large floppy one with a wavy brim which she considered suited her very well because it hid her face. It was a pretty shade of pink and would help to liven up the rather plain oyster colour silk dress she intended to wear. She had arranged a day off for the wedding so that she would have plenty of time to drive to Bradninch where Jimmy lived, and for a little while at least she had wondered if Marius would suggest that they should go together, but he had said nothing; possibly he had forgotten all about it, for village weddings, she deduced shrewdly, were by no means the only social occasions in the lives of such men as Marius.

She went slowly down one side of the ward and just as slowly up the other, giving her attention to each patient in turn until she came to Mr Bow, who was sitting up in bed making knots with a short length of rope.

‘What are you doing?' asked Tabitha. ‘Did the physio people give you that to do?'

‘I'm practicing seamen's knots, Sister, and Marius brought me the rope. A good idea, don't you think?'

‘Well, yes, I suppose so if you like such things,' said Tabitha. ‘At least it keeps your fingers supple.'

Mr Bow executed something complicated with admirable dexterity. ‘Indeed, yes.' He gave her a brief glance from his blue eyes. ‘I am very comfortable, thank you, Sister.'

Tabitha felt herself dismissed, so she said good night and moved on to Mr Raynard's cubicle. He was deep in a book, but he put a finger carefully in its pages to mark where he had got to and said: ‘Hullo, Tabby Nightingale, still dragging your weary feet from bed to bed?'

‘Well, really,' she responded indignantly, ‘you make it sound as
though I've got varicose veins or bunions! You and Mr Bow are very quiet this evening—aren't you speaking?'

‘Good lord, girl, what queer notions you do get into your head. Of course we're speaking, but at the moment we are occupied. How is he getting on with his knots?'

Tabitha looked a little bewildered. ‘Very nicely, I imagine. Why is he doing them?'

Mr Raynard darted a quick look at her curious face. ‘You'll know—any minute now.' He held his book up for her to see. It was a treatise on coastal navigation and made no sense to her at all.

‘Are you both taking a course on sailing?' she hazarded at length.

‘You could call it that—and then again, you couldn't,' said her chief obscurely. ‘My wife's late, she promised she would be here.'

Tabitha began to walk away from his bed. ‘Mrs Raynard's coming through the door now,' she said. ‘Good night, sir.'

She paused for a word with Mrs Raynard and went on her way towards the ward door. Another fifteen minutes and the night staff would be on; already the two student nurses were doing a last round of the ward, filling water jugs and collecting papers which their readers had refused to hand over earlier in the evening; there was no one very ill. Tabitha decided to go to the office—it was hot there, but it would be nice to have a few minutes to herself. She was at the door when it was swung open from the other side and Marius came in; when she would have passed him with a civil good evening he caught her arm with a ‘No—we want you by Mr Raynard's bed for a few minutes.'

He spoke without urgency, but there was no escaping the gentle grip on her elbow. She would have liked to have asked why as they went back down the ward, but there was no time, only, as they approached Mr Raynard's bed, she was able to observe that neither he nor his wife looked in the least surprised at her return.

‘Of course,' grunted Mr Raynard, ‘I don't like the idea of doing this in public as it were, but Marius has the idea that his suggestion needs our combined support.' He fixed Tabitha with a gimlet eye. ‘You'll not be able to disobey me, my girl.'

Tabitha's bewilderment grew, mixed with a vague annoyance as she watched Marius scoop Mr Bow out of his bed and into the wheelchair by it, and trundle him briskly into Mr Raynard's cubicle. She said tartly: ‘I shouldn't count on that, sir,' and he roared with laughter before saying:

‘Go on, Marius, before Tabby gets cross.'

Marius was facing her across the bed. He said in his usual placid voice: ‘It's not fair to tease you, Tabitha. We—that is, all of us here—want you to accompany us on holiday. Mr Bow and Mr Raynard will still be partial invalids even in a couple of weeks' time, but they have a crazy idea that a week or two's sailing is just what they need. They'll neither of them be much use in a boat, but Mrs Raynard crews and you have done some sailing, haven't you? It seems to all of us ideal if you would help us out by coming along as well, to keep an eye on them both and be company for Mrs Raynard. There's plenty of room in my house for all of us and the boat will take us easily enough, though heaven alone knows where we shall stow two plastered legs.' He paused and then said with a smile: ‘The whole thing's a little mad, isn't it, but if anything goes wrong they'll at least be in good hands. There's just one other thing—do you suppose Meg would mind looking after Podger for a few more weeks? I promise you it won't be much longer than that. I've another lecture tour in about two months' time, after that Mr Bow will be permanently settled and Podger can rejoin him.'

The silence almost shouted at her when he finished speaking. Not only were those around the bed waiting on her answer, she was aware too that those nearest them in the ward were straining their ears, and that the two student nurses had been tidying the same bed on the opposite side of the ward since Marius had begun to speak; all the same, she had to stop and think. She recognized the fact that it was a matter of convenience that Marius should have asked her to go with them. Both gentlemen would need help to a limited extent and some restraining influence; not by the wildest stretch of the imagination could she suppose that Marius's invitation had been offered for any other reason. She asked at length:

‘How long should we be gone?' and saw the sudden gleam in Marius's eyes. ‘If I should go,' she added hastily, and he laughed.

‘Three weeks at the outside.'

It sounded wonderful, but there were still several things she had thought of. ‘I'm not booked for a holiday until September—and who will do your work, Mr Raynard?'

The Old Man's face assumed a cunning expression. ‘Ah, this is where we have used our undoubtedly intelligent brains. Provided—I say provided, Tabby, you agree to come—we have persuaded the powers that be, to allow the ward to be emptied so that it may be
brought up to date and redecorated—heaven knows it's long overdue. It will take about ten days, that leaves George a few days to get the patients transferred; the rest he can cope with in the surgical annexe and then fill this place up again ready for Marius when we come back.'

‘And when are you going to start work, Mr Raynard?' Tabitha wanted to know. ‘You won't be able to manage the theatre…' Mr Raynard showed his splendid teeth. ‘Quiet, girl! I shall do very well. George will be here to do most of the work when Marius goes. I've got it all thought out, so don't distract my thoughts.'

So Marius wouldn't be coming back; at least, only for a very short time. Then presumably he would go to Chidlake, to Lilith. One of Meg's endless fund of quotations came into her head, quite unbidden. ‘A bird in the hand…' Marius was hardly a bird, but it seemed to Tabitha that for once there was some point in the saying. She looked around at their faces; Mr Bow, bearing the satisfied look of a Father Christmas who had successfully weathered yet another Christmas Eve; Mr Raynard looking like a thundercloud—which meant nothing at all; his wife, who caught Tabby's eye and smiled as though she meant it, and Marius, seemingly placid and unworried as to what she would say. But the look he gave her, although it was both these things, also contained the certainty that she wouldn't disappoint either Mr Raynard or Knotty. She said, looking at him: ‘I should like to come very much.'

Later, sitting in the flat, talking it over with Meg, she wondered if she had been wise to accept. After all, there were other nurses—she said so out loud to Meg, who pointed out in a practical voice that there wouldn't be much sense in taking a stranger with them—someone they wouldn't know and probably wouldn't like either. Meg knew all about Mr Raynard's peculiar temperament and she knew about Mr Bow too.

‘Poor old man,' she said kindly, ‘you can't expect him to take to someone he's never met before—why, it would spoil his holiday.' She looked at Tabitha's downbent head. ‘That's why they asked you, Miss Tabby. They know you'll put up with Mr Raynard's tantrums, and his wife likes you.'

She didn't mention Marius at all, and neither did Tabitha.

A couple of days later when she had the opportunity to speak to Marius she asked what arrangements she should make. She had already been to Matron, to be told that Mr Raynard had already spo
ken personally to that lady, who said with an unwonted degree of friendliness:

‘Of course I agreed at once, Sister Crawley, provided you yourself wish to accompany the party. It seems to me to be a very good idea, and an excellent opportunity to have the ward redecorated and modernized while you are away. I shall come down to see you in a day or so; I daresay you may have some ideas about colour schemes and so forth.'

She nodded gracious dismissal and Tabitha went back to the ward where she found Marius and George drinking coffee in her office. It was then that she asked what she was expected to do next.

‘Nothing,' said Marius lazily. ‘At least, get your passport up to date if it isn't, and I suppose women buy clothes.' He looked at George. ‘Do they, George?'

George, being a married man, said that yes, they did and he couldn't think why, for old clothes were the only possible wear on holiday. This remark naturally led to a discussion as to the best type of holiday, and Tabitha, seeing that she wasn't going to get anywhere at all with her own affairs, excused herself, saying with a tinge of sarcasm that there were those who worked; a remark which was quite lost upon her hearers, deep as they were in the joys of fly fishing.

She had better luck with Mrs Raynard, who happened to visit her husband that afternoon. The two of them spent ten minutes comparing notes about what they should take with them so that Tabitha's mind was set at rest upon that important point at least, although no one had, as yet, told her how they were going. When she had asked Mr Raynard all he said was:

‘Good grief, girl, Marius will see to everything—why do you fuss? You're all alike!'

‘In which case,' said Tabitha, thoroughly put out by this unfair remark, ‘you can quite well do without me, and I certainly don't care to come if I'm to be bawled at every time I open my mouth!'

The last word came out as a small scream, for she was firmly caught round the waist from behind. She didn't need to ask who it was and her first thought was that it was lucky that they were in the cubicle and not out in the ward. ‘My solemn promise,' said Marius's voice in her ear, ‘that if the chief puts you out I shall personally take him out into deep water and drop him overboard. I shan't need weight—that plaster will do very well.'

They all laughed and he let her go, whereupon she turned smartly
on her heel and made for the door, where she paused to say: ‘There are two new cases in, sir—would you like to see them, or shall I ring for Mr Steele?'

He didn't answer this but asked instead: ‘When are you off, Tabby?'

‘At six.'

‘I've had no opportunity to talk to you about the journey to Veere—perhaps this evening?'

‘No,' said Tabitha too quickly. ‘I—I've a previous engagement!' She gave him a direct look, for after all it wasn't really a lie; she had promised Meg that she would help her make jam. Marius returned the look with one of his own and although his expression was politely regretful, she was fairly sure that he was laughing at her. ‘Some other time,' he murmured gently. ‘And now what about these patients?'

Some other time was a vague term rendered useless by a sudden avalanche of work, for a local building site sent in two men, one with a fractured spine and the other with a crushed pelvis; then there was the postman whose brakes had failed on a steep hill just outside the city, and the retired naval officer who, like Mr Raynard, had come a cropper in his garden and fractured his patella into so many pieces that all Marius could do was to remove them—the old gentleman would be a little stiff in the knee, but as he was well over seventy, this drawback wasn't too severe. There was a little lull after that so that there was time to catch up on the paperwork—time for Marius to seek her out too.

Which he did one afternoon as she sat making out the papers of the patients who had been admitted for operation in two days'time. He asked from the door: ‘May I come in?' and then, before she could do more than nod: ‘You have a day off tomorrow, haven't you—unless you're going to put it off again?'

She had done just that earlier in the week because Rogers' young man had had a birthday and wanted to take her out to celebrate. ‘No,' she said sedately.

‘Good. I'm going to Chidlake, come with me—we can talk on the way.' He came a little further into the room. ‘You can give Mrs Crawley and Lilith a surprise.'

A fine surprise, thought Tabitha, feeling sick at the thought of the fun they would have at her expense. She drew a breath. ‘I—I don't suppose you know that I—we don't get on, that is we haven't many
interests in common. I don't go home often.' She was drawing a cat with enormous whiskers and a curly tail on the blotting paper and didn't look up.