Surgeon of Distinction Read online

  “Oh, no! Surely not.” Alma looked dismayed. “Then”—she glanced at her watch—“it’s already gone? And there isn’t anything now before the eleven-fifty?”

  “Except that that is now the eleven twenty-two, I’m afraid you’re right.”

  “And it’s a slow one, getting in about five or something horrible. Oh, dear”—she sighed resignedly—it’s my own fault for not checking up. But that always was the six thirty-five all the years I was here. Thank you very much, Mr. Perring, but I needn’t trouble you for the lift now. I had better— ”

  “Do you know me, then?” He gave her a quick, half-smiling glance. “You must be one of the nurses who came back for the reunion.”

  “Yes, of course. I thought you recognized me when you offered me the lift.”

  "No. I just saw you were in a hurry. Should I have recognized you, then?” He slowed the car and glanced at her with rather more attention. “Why—of course! How could I forget the best theatre staff nurse I ever had?”

  “Oh, sir!” Alma was almost as much overcome by this as by the reported tribute from Matron, and she felt it had been worth missing her train just to hear Mr. Perring say those words.

  “It’s Nurse Miles, isn’t it? I didn’t recognize you without the uniform. And you’ve grown up, somehow.”

  “Grown up, sir? But I was quite grown up when I was in the theatre at All Souls, I assure you.” She laughed. “In fact, I felt a hundred at the end of some of those days when you’d been operating from eight-thirty in the morning.

  “You never looked it,” he assured her, and she was aware of a sort of gratified astonishment that he had known how she looked at all. “You looked about seventeen and very frightened the first time you appeared in the theatre, I remember.”

  “You remember? But—how could you? out of all the nurses you see?”

  “I don’t know. Except that you did look so young, I suppose. And I thought, ‘Heaven help us! This one’s just out of school. A lot of help she’s going to be on a busy day!’ But the odd thing was that you were a lot of help. You had all the right instincts, and you didn’t make a single error, terrified though you were.”

  Alma laughed reminiscently.

  “Yes, I was frightened that first day,” she admitted.

  “Who isn’t on their first day?” he replied good-humoredly. “Lord, how petrified I felt at my first operation!” And he too laughed reminiscently. “Well, here we are at the station you don’t want. Do you want to go in and check on train times?”

  “No, thank you, sir. I’m sure you’re right. You always were,” Alma said with a smile. “But I’ll get out here and go and find somewhere to have a meal and pass the evening.”

  “No—wait a moment.” He stopped her as she was about to get out of the car. “I have a better idea. I’m driving down to spend the night with some friends in Essex. I could drop you at Chelmsford, without going much out of my way, and there’s sure to be a late train from there. It may mean a late night for you, but it will be better than an all-night journey. How would that do?”

  “It would do wonderfully, of course. But—I don’t want to—to impose on you ”

  “People don’t impose on me at all easily, Nurse. You ought to remember that,” he told her, with a touch of grim amusement. “Sit back, and I’ll undertake to get you to Chelmsford before eleven, even if we stop for something to eat on the way.”

  “Thank you very much.”

  She sat back, as he had bade her—so instinctively did she obey him to the very letter—and she remained silent as he skilfully threaded his way through the evening traffic and out on to the London road.

  The momentary agitation about losing her train had completely vanished, and she felt pleasantly relaxed. There was something indescribably reassuring in the proximity of the famous surgeon, and she felt she could leave everything to him. He used to have that effect on his patients, she remembered. Not a genial or an expansive sort of man, but one who carried a sense of absolute reassurance.

  “It isn’t that he glosses over anything,” one woman had told Alma, after her preliminary interview with him. “It’s that he makes you able to look things in the face without flinching. I looked at his hands and I thought, ‘If I have to put my life in any hands, those are the ones for me.’ ”

  She watched his hands now, on the wheel of the car. Strong, rather beautiful hands. And she recalled, as one might recall a work of art, some of the incredibly bold and skilful things she had seen those hands perform.

  It had been exhilarating working with him. Much more exhilarating than anything she did now. And, even as she thought that, he asked.

  “What are you doing these days, Nurse?”

  “I’m in private nursing, sir.”

  “And you like it?”

  “I like any nursing,” Alma confessed. “But I was just thinking”—she smiled slightly—“that I sometimes miss the—the exhilaration of theatre work.”

  “Naturally. I know what you mean. There’s a drama and tension about surgery that you don’t get in any other branch of our work. No wonder we speak of the theatre.” He smiled a little drily. “It’s very nearly a show, you know, and every operation is a performance, in which we have to call on all our resources to bring it off successfully.”

  “I suppose that’s it.”

  “Of course. Don’t you ever feel you would like to go back to theatre work?”

  “Often. But a lot depends on who is operating.” She too smiled, but a trifle ruefully, for she could remember a number of dull, worthy surgeons, who did a good workaday job, without even a flicker of the brilliance which distinguished the work of Maxwell Perring.

  “Well, suppose I were operating—” He threw out the suggestion so carelessly that she was not sure if this were an academic discussion or an actual proposition.

  “How do you mean, sir? Is this a concrete suggestion or—?”

  “It most certainly is. How would you like to come and work in my nursing home? There’s a certain amount of theatre work there, though not of course the continuous stream that you get in a hospital. But”—he flashed a smile at her—“we’d keep you very thoroughly employed.”

  “I’m sure you would.” She smiled back at him, and suddenly her spirits took an upward leap in a way they had not done for a very long time. “Would it mean living in?” she enquired, after a moment.

  “I think so. We might make special arrangements, though, if you very much wanted it. Do you live with your family or something?”

  “No, sir. I have no one to consider but myself.”

  “No”—he glanced at her left hand—“fiancé or anything like that to take you away as soon as we have you nicely settled?”

  “No, sir. I don’t think so,” she said. And then she blushed scarlet, at the naive absurdity of that very literal statement.

  He looked a good deal amused.

  “Do you mean that you’ve quarrelled irrevocably with him?” he enquired. “Or that you just can’t get him to the starting post?”

  “Neither, really,” she said slowly. And then, as though she simply could not help it—“I think there’s someone else with him. That’s all.”

  She simply could not imagine how she had come to voice her inmost fears to Mr. Perring, of all people, and the moment the words were out, she would have done anything to recall them.

  But he didn’t look amused that time, nor in the slightest degree embarrassed by her unsought confidence. He merely said,

  “I’m so sorry. That sort of thing can hurt like hell at the time, I know. But, if you’ll believe me, one does get over it. I remember, when I was a house surgeon, tearing myself to ribbons about a girl, and now I can’t even remember what color her eyes were.” Alma smiled faintly.

  “Perhaps,” she said softly, “you were not really in love with her.”

  “Perhaps,” he agreed very kindly, “I wasn’t. But you are, eh?”

  “Oh, yes.” She spoke so simply that he did no
t query the assertion, and for a while they drove in silence. Then he said,

  “Will you consider the suggestion I have made?”

  “Yes, Mr. Perring. I am considering it. May I let you know in a few days’ time?”

  “Please do. And be very sure of one thing. I should very much like to have you work with me again.”

  “Thank you, sir,” she said. And all the rest of that evening she hugged that statement to her, as a sort of salve to the pride which Jeremy had hurt so bitterly.

  They stopped for a quick meal on the way, and she found it extraordinarily pleasant to walk into the hotel dining room with such a distinguished-looking escort beside her. And while their very excellent meal was being brought, she unobtrusively watched him in the big, old-fashioned mirror opposite them.

  One would call him good-looking, she supposed, though the straight line of his jaw and the disconcerting keenness of his very blue eyes precluded the rather softer word “handsome”. She saw now why she had thought of him as haughty and reserved when she had been younger, for he carried himself with a quiet assurance which bordered on arrogance, and the faintly sardonic curve to his mouth showed that he was not a man who suffered fools gladly.

  “You wouldn’t overlook him—anywhere,” thought Alma. “Now he has what Judith called ‘star quality’.”

  A waiter hovered obsequiously in the middle distance throughout their meal, and there was no question of any of Maxwell Perring’s quiet orders receiving anything but instantaneous attention. Consequently, they were able to resume their journey at exactly the time he had calculated, and it was no surprise to Alma, that, true to his word, he drove her up to Chelmsford Station well before eleven o’clock.

  “You’ll be all right now,” he said, having ascertained that there was a train to take her to London. “Goodbye, Nurse. And let me know your decision one way or the other during the next few days. You can telephone me here”—he gave her a card—“and leave a message with my very efficient secretary, if I’m not in.”

  “Thank you, sir. And thank you very much indeed for the lift.”

  “You were welcome.” He held out his hand to her, and when she put hers into it, he held her fingers for a moment in his long, strong ones. Then he returned to the car and she mounted the stairs to the platform, where she had to wait only ten minutes before her train came in.

  All the way to Liverpool Street, she sat there with her thoughts swinging to and fro between Maxwell Perring and his offer, and Jeremy and the girl she had seen clinging to his arm.

  If Jeremy really cared about someone else, here was the heaven-sent opportunity to tear herself away from a situation which could only cause her slowly increasing anguish. And yet—the very thought of such a move was like contemplating a major operation without an anaesthetic.

  She took a taxi from the station to her home. And, as they turned into the quiet street in which she lived, she saw that another taxi had just stopped outside her door, and Jeremy was paying off the driver.

  When he saw her get out he waited for her, and they went into the house together, he so natural and matter-of-fact that, for a wild and wonderful moment, she was able to tell herself that all her fears were imaginary.

  “Where have you been?” he enquired. “Oh, yes, of course. It was some jamboree at your old hospital, wasn’t it?”

  “Centenary celebrations—yes.”

  “Did you enjoy yourself?”

  “Very much. And”—suddenly, with a beating heart, she decided to put the issue to some test—“I was offered a new and rather exciting job.”

  “You don’t say? Up there?”

  Her voice died in her throat. He was accepting the idea quite calmly. Six months ago he would have been frantic at the thought of separation.

  “No,” she heard herself say in a thin, cold little voice. “It would be here in London. One of the surgeons with whom I used to work at All Souls has his own nursing home here. But it might involve living in.”

  “And giving up this place, you mean?” Again he spoke as though the possibility could be contemplated with composure.

  “I don’t know. And I’m not at all sure that I’ll accept. For many things, I should hate to—to leave here.”

  “I’d hate to have you go,” he said. But in his voice she detected the deadly sound of perfunctory regret.

  “Well, I don’t have to decide for a few days.” Somehow she kept her tone casual. Then she bade him goodnight and fled from him.

  Not that her calm and leisurely mounting of the stairs had any outward appearance of flight. But in all essentials she was running away from an unbearable situation. A situation she could neither challenge nor overcome. He was tired of her; that was all. She had lost him.

  As she turned the last corner on the stairs she broke into a little ran, which brought her panting to her door. Trembling, she inserted her key, pushed open the door, and then closed it behind her. She was crying now, in deep, soundless sobs, while the tears ran down her cheeks and trickled saltily into the corners of her mouth.

  It was over. She could cry until she made herself ill, but nothing would bring him back. It was over, and all she could do for Jeremy now was to take herself out of his life.

  The next day she telephoned to the number Mr. Perring had given her, and a bright and efficient-sounding voice replied,

  “Oh, yes, Nurse Miles. Mr. Perring said you might ring. Would you like to speak to him?”

  “Yes, please.” There v as a sort of faint comfort in the thought of speaking to Maxwell Perring. Arid when that quiet, reassuring voice sounded in her ear she thought that even the pain at her heart seemed momentarily more bearable.

  “Nurse Miles? Good. What’s the verdict?”

  “I’d like to accept the offer, sir. Or at any rate to discuss the conditions.”

  “I’m very glad to hear it. Could you go along and see Matron this afternoon? She will do the actual engaging of you, of course. But I’ll let her know that I should like to have you.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “You sound depressed. Is anything wrong?”

  “N-no. Except that—there was someone else he wanted.”

  “Someone—? Oh, my dear, I’m sorry.” He sounded truly sorry, though she supposed it could hardly be a matter of great interest to him. “Try not to feel too badly. And—a new job is a wonderful antidote, you know. In the circumstances, will you prefer to live in the nursing home?”

  “I think so. Though I shall probably keep on my flat too for a while. It’s the only home I have.”

  “Well, then, perhaps you should keep it. That’s up to you. Shall I tell Matron to expect you about three?”

  “Yes, please,” Alma said, and as she put down the receiver, she felt she had cut the first strand of the cords which bound her to Jeremy.

  The interview with the Matron of the nursing home that afternoon was extremely satisfactory. Even gratifying. It was obvious that if Mr. Perring wanted her, Mr. Perring should have her. And although the Matron was a good-looking, clear-eyed, authoritative woman, who evidently brooked no nonsense, she did not disdain to tell Alma that she would like to have her on the staff, in the rank of Sister.

  “Most of your work will be here,” she explained, as she showed Alma the small but perfectly equipped operating theatre. “We do quite a lot of surgical work, and you will be in charge of the theatre. But you’ll get a certain amount of general nursing, too, when we have no operations on. I suppose, however, if you’ve been doing private nursing, you don’t mind variety?”

  “I like it,” Alma assured her. “When would you want me to start?”

  “Frankly, as soon as you can. Could you come in on Sunday, and be ready to start work on Monday morning?”

  “Yes, I think so. I’ll have to give notice to the agency to which I’m attached, of course. But, otherwise”—she thought of her little flat, and the stairs which led down to Jeremy’s door—“there’s absolutely nothing to arrange.”

&n
bsp; “Splendid,” said the Matron bracingly, and Alma realized that, under her jurisdiction, there would be little time for wistful pauses or nostalgic reflections.

  It was almost alarming to find bow easily the transfer to the new life could be made. A little as though one had had no real roots, after all.

  The agency which employed her as a private nurse seemed regretful at her departure, but resigned to the fact that she would naturally choose to accept such a good offer as the one Mr. Perring had made.

  As to her tenancy of the flat, there was nothing at all to arrange. So long as she paid her monthly rent, the place was hers, whether she lived in it or not. There were not even any special goodbyes to be said since, technically speaking, she was not leaving the place.

  All the same, as she carried her case down the stairs on that Sunday evening, irresistible impulse stopped her outside Jeremy’s door and forced her to knock. To him at least she must say some sort of goodbye. She must carry away with her some expression of regret from him, even if only a conventional one.

  But even this was denied her. There was no answer to her knock. And although she repeated it, and stood there quite a long time, fighting back her tears, no one came. And presently she went on slowly down the stairs, with the strange feeling that the door of her old life was irrevocably closed against her.

  At the nursing home, the Matron welcomed her quite cordially, and personally conducted her to her charming room at the top of the building.

  “Why, it’s delightful!” Alma looked round, smiling and taking in the full attraction of cleverly built-in furniture, a wide, well-placed window with a window-seat beneath it, and singularly pretty curtains and divan-covering. “One could make a home of this.”