Seaside Hospital (8 page)

Never before had she felt so trapped. She stared unbelievingly into his cold, hard face. This was the man she had come to for help
and advice, believing him to be her one friend. In all innocence, trusting him, she now realized that she had played into his hands. Although she was at her wits’ ends to know what to do, she asked herself, as she stumbled out into the corridor, how she could have been so foolish?

Lisa never remembered how she got downstairs to the hotel vestibule from Ellard’s room. She only realized that she was there, trying to push her way through the crowds in evening dress, on their way to and from the brilliantly lit bar and dance room. A clock on the wall pointed to nine forty-five, and she forced herself to work out how much time there was left. A waiter reminded her of how conspicuous her nurse’s uniform looked in that glittering throng, by coming over to her and asking her if she was looking for someone.

She shook her head, and then saw someone she knew—Derek Frenton. Alone, with a glass in his hand, he was pushing his way through to her from the direction of the bar.

“Lisa! What on earth are you doing here? Are you all right?” he said, taking her arm. “You’re as white as a sheet.”

“I—came—” she began, and then said, almost hysterically, “How is it you aren’t at the theater, waiting for my sister Jacky?”

“
Oh well, Jacky and I—Lisa, let’s sit down somewhere. I want to talk to you.”

He took her into a corner where it was quiet, and signalled to a waiter. “Have you had supper, Lisa?”

She shook her head, so he ordered sandwiches and a drink. It steadied her, and she felt better for the food.

“Jacky’s got it all wrong, you know,” Derek was saying, and she forced herself to listen. “She thinks I’m going to marry her, but that was never the idea. If I married anyone at all—” and he broke off to look eloquently at her.

“Does my sister know this?” she found herself saying, while all the time sheer panic drove her to think, to try and work out how she could get the dangerously valuable clip now reposing in her pocket back to where it belonged.

“Of course Jacky doesn’t know it,” Derek said impatiently. “I’ve tried to tell her, but she won’t listen when she doesn’t want to hear something.”

“Jacky’s like that,” Lisa agreed, and then quite suddenly her chaotic thoughts straightened out, and she knew what she had to do. “Derek, never mind Jacky. Listen, I want you to do something
for me.”

He brightened up at once. “Anything, Lisa,” he said, remembering the scene with his father again that afternoon, about getting Lisa back. “You’ve only to say!”

“It’s rather tricky,” she warned him. “You see, when I was at the do this afternoon, there was trouble about the children I had with me.”

“The youngsters in the pond? Good heavens, were they the ones you had with you? Mother was furious about them—until she found her clip was missing!”

“That’s what I mean. You see, I ought to have said that the clip had come into my possession,” she said, framing her words carefully so that she could stick to the truth. “But I forgot, I’m afraid, when our senior surgeon told me to take the children back to the hospital in his own car. He’s awful when he’s angry, so everything went out of my head. I got into trouble for leaving the children and—”

“You say you have Mother’s clip?” he broke in.

“Yes, but that’s not all,” she said earnestly. “I want you to return it secretly—I’m in enough trouble as it is, and if it got out that I’d forgotten to turn it in this afternoon, well, you can imagine what hot water I’d be in at the hospital!”

“Good heavens! Where did you find it, Lisa?”

“Oh, lying on the ground,” she said, purposely vague, but realizing with anguish that the further she went into this thing to save Jacky, the further from the truth she would be forced to stray. “Never mind that—will you return it for me?”

“If that clip’s safe and sound, I’ll do anything you say,” he said fervently. “Where is it now, Lisa?”

She showed him the clip, lying in her pocket.

The change in his face was almost laughable, if the whole thing had not been so deadly serious. “Here, let’s get out to my car,” he said, getting up.

“But you will just say you found it, won’t you? Don’t let my name be dragged into it, will you, Derek?” she pleaded.

He did not answer until he had maneuvered the silver roadster out from the parking lot.

“But why?” he asked her then. “I mean to say, there’s a fat reward for the return of this thing. Surely you want it, Lisa, and you should have it!”

“Derek, you don’t understand. Bother the reward—the only thing that means anything to me is that it shan’t get to Matron’s office. You see, I was looking for someone and I went into the house, and I was in uniform, and one of the maids spoke to me. Don’t you see?”

He laughed. “Surely you don’t think anyone’d think you took it, Lisa!” he said, turning onto the coast road.

“Where are you taking me, Derek? What’s the time?” she cried in dismay. “I have to be back by eleven.”

Her urgency communicated itself to him. “You mean you want to go back to the hospital first?”

“Yes. You can give this clip back afterward.”

“But I thought you’d gotten a late pass, since you were wandering about in the Royal,” he said, wondering why Lisa had been at the Royal Hotel tonight. Not to see him, he considered, judging by the surprise in her face when she saw him. Who had she been looking for at the party that afternoon? Who had she been expecting to find inside the house? Derek remembered seeing Lisa in Ellard Lindon’s car, and recalled that Lindon lived at the Royal.

He wanted Lisa back badly. First and foremost because of his father’s ultimatum, but now on account of his discovering that she was no longer a quiet little hospital nurse, but a girl who spent her spare time with men like Lindon, whom everyone locally knew to be a man who made money as quickly as he spent it. She had gone up in his estimation by that.

His pulses raced as he said, “All right, I’ll run you back to the hospital, then return Mother’s clip and tell her I found it. How will that suit you?”

“Oh, please, Derek,” Lisa said, feeling almost light-headed with relief. “And remember your promise to keep my name out of it?”

“Of course,” he said easily.

He was used to driving Lisa back to the hospital, and slipped into the old trick of nosing the car carefully into the yard so that she had only to make a dash across to the door of the nurses’ residence. “You’ll just do it in time,” he said.

“But the clock on the dashboard says eleven fifteen!”

“No, Lisa, that’s fast,” he lied easily and drew her purposefully into his arms.

“What are you doing, Derek?” she gasped, putting out her hands to push him away from her.

“I know you said you wouldn’t come back to me at any price, but if I do as you want me to about the clip, it rather alters things, doesn’t it?” he said softly, and he smiled as, after the briefest hesitation Lisa, in despair, succumbed to his kiss.

Was it always going to be like this, she asked herself wildly, eternally paying the price for getting Jacky out of trouble?

CHAPTER SIX

“W
here shall we go this afternoon?” Mary asked Lisa the following day. “How about the flicks—it’s the first time our free afternoons have coincided for ages!”

“It looks like rain,” Lisa objected. She was hoping for a quiet time that she could spend in studying, and had already made up her mind to find a secluded corner seat on the pier.

“Put in extra time tomorrow on your notes,” Mary advised.

Mary could be very persuasive, so Lisa agreed.

As they left the hospital, large spots of rain splashed the pavement, and Mary said, “Oh, dash, we’ve just missed a bus.”

“Let’s go back, then,” Lisa urged.

“No, look, Lisa—look at that big car, that red one. The driver’s waving at you. Do you know him?”

“It’s Ellard Lindon!” Lisa gasped, her heart sinking.

Ellard had crept up so that the car was now abreast of them. “Hop in, Lisa—both of you!” he called, with a cheery smile, as if that distressing scene in his room had never happened.

With scorching cheeks, Lisa climbed in beside him, Mary sitting next to her. “Now, where do you both want to be dropped?” he asked.

“The movie theater,” Mary said promptly.

“Grim way to spend an afternoon, isn’t it?” he laughed. “I’m going to the races. I suppose you wouldn’t both care to come?”

Mary disregarded Lisa’s swift warning pressure on her arm and said she’d love to.

“We shall get soaked,” Lisa objected. “I’d much rather go to a movie.”

“My dear, it’s all under cover. I have seats in the grandstand,” Ellard said, and as far as Mary was concerned, that was all that mattered.

“Well, I’ll come, even if Lisa won’t,” she said, laughing. “All these years I’ve been in Barnwell Bay, I’ve never yet managed to go to the races; I’d adore it.”

“All right,” Lisa agreed miserably, feeling that it would be too awkward for words if she insisted on being dropped alone at the cinema, since Ellard had been her friend and not Mary’s.

Ellard amazed her that afternoon. He was so kind and thoughtful and charming to both of them, and not once did he refer to their evening together the day before.

Lisa was frankly uneasy, but Mary was so charmed by him that there seemed no point in being unfriendly herself.

“Have you girls never backed horses before?” Ellard said, as they lost again and again with their small bets.

“We’ve never had the chance,” the incorrigible Mary said. “You ought to see what life is like in a hospital!”

“I have an idea,” Ellard said, laughing, and further enchanted Mary by taking them both to tea at a big hotel near the race course.

When at last he drove them back to the hospital, Lisa felt a little lightheaded with anxiety as to what lay behind this latest move of his.

Mary hopped out of the car first. It was no longer raining. The sun had come out and made the wet pavements one huge glare.

Ellard held Lisa’s wrist as she was about to get out of the car and said softly to her, “Going to make another date with me, Lisa? Dinner and dance at the Gloucester?”

“After last time?” Lisa said derisively. “You ought to know better than to ask me, Ellard!”

“Oh, I don’t know,” he said, smiling mockingly. “Once in a while the best of us make mistakes. I did that night, and now I know you don’t care for my kisses, I won’t do that again. But that doesn’t mean you have to refuse to come out with me any more. Now, is it a date?”

Conscious of Mary’s odd expression as she waited for her, Lisa said breathlessly, “I’ll let you know.”

He laughed easily and let her go. “All right, I’ll be waiting for a telephone call from
you
. By the way, I did tell you I still had those letters of Jacky’s, didn’t I?”

“What letters?” Lisa gasped, ashen-faced.

“Oh, didn’t you know about them? She wasn’t very discreet about what she put on paper, actually. She wrote asking me not to go any further about the things she—er—appropriated, before she came to Barnwell Bay.”

That summer, there was not a lot of time for worrying about private troubles in St. Mildred’s. Lisa, torn with anxiety about this new development, found herself caught up with a new casualty which brought her into daily contact with Randall Carson. Everyone was talking about it.

“He’s furious about it,” Mary said at lunch next day. “You kno
w
how angry he gets about the waste of life on the roads. Bad enough with a straight street accident, but this one—well! The child’s only two. It seems he wandered from his parents and got lost, and in a panic he crossed the road right in front of a car.”

“How did you find all this out, Mary?”

“One of the nurses in Casualty just told me. She says Randall Carson’s hopping mad.”

Lisa felt Randall Carson’s anger the minute he came on the ward, just after the child was brought up from the operating room. As she rushed about with her routine duties, keeping an eye on two new junior nurses at the same time, she found that her thoughts kept returning to the subject of Ellard and the letters. She wondered what she herself could do to frighten Jacky into giving up her thieving habits. It was all very well for Jacky to say she was only borrowing, when quite obviously it was stealing. Lisa doubted whether a threat to go to the police would have the desired effect. Jacky did not seem to realize that she could not go on stealing indefinitely and calling on Lisa to get her out of trouble. Now, not only Derek but Ellard too was making demands on Lisa, as a result of Jacky’s escapades. How would it all end?

With a sigh she thrust these thoughts to the back of her head and set the juniors quietly to amusing the other children for the sake of the new little patient, who was still unconscious, in his corner bed surrounded with screens. He was a chubby little boy with a shock of carrot-red curls, and long silky-brown lashes fanned his freckled cheeks.

“Christopher,” the notes said, and beneath was added a further note
that his real name and address were unknown and his parents uncontacted.

Sister Rudolph’s face, usually so smooth and tranquil, had a ripple of emotion go over it, Lisa noticed, when they went together behind the screens. Randall Carson’s face softened, too, Lisa saw, and once, while she stood behind him waiting, he turned sharply and looked at her, and she was aware that her eyes were misty.

She went about her ward duties wondering whether he would think any more about that promised visit to his clinic, now that he was spending so much time by the bedside of little Christopher. She wanted to go to his clinic with him more than she had at first realized. That smile of his had set her pulses racing, but at the same time she was apprehensive about spending an afternoon with him because of his uncertain temper.

Yet, in spite of everything, he had not forgotten, and he knew, too, without her reminding him, when her next free time came up on the board. And so the afternoon arrived.

“We’ll drive along the coast road all the way,” he told her, when she was settled beside him in the well-remembered dark car, “and we’ll avoid Chertonbury town. It’s too nice a day to waste breathing gasoline fumes.”

The clinic had once been a private house. “An old patient left quite a lot of money to equip the place,” Randall Carson explained, as Lisa walked by his side through the light and airy rooms with their fine new equipment and efficient-looking staff. “Lady Frenton is arranging another function to raise money for further equipment.”

The mention of Lady Frenton sent a little cloud over the day. Lisa knew that Derek’s mother did not like her, and that was another thing worrying her.

In the long room where the children were learning to walk again without aid, she found Randall Carson looking at her again with an odd, intent look.

“You mustn’t
care
so much, you know,” he said, in a strange voice.

“But you care, too, don’t you?” Lisa said, with a flash of insight that made him raise his eyebrows. Then he smiled that dazzling, exciting smile of his that people so seldom saw.

“Yes I care a great deal, but I don’t let it upset me,” he told her. “Where would our young patients be if we got upset about them?”

“But it’s so terrible!” Lisa said passionately. “That poor little boy—imagine how he felt when he was lost and then knocked down. So scared and alone!”

“He probably didn’t know anything about it,” Randall Carson said, in a very calm voice. But he added grimly, “What I want to do is to find those neglectful parents.”

He took her out to the terrace, where tea was brought to them by a smiling nurse who obviously adored him.

“The police are trying to trace them, and the press are doing their best,” he went on, when they were alone again. “Would you help too?”

“How can I help?” she asked, startled.

“This child was staying in Barnwell Bay. A lot of people recognized him, yet no one will tell the police anything about him. But they might talk to a nurse.”

Lisa was agonized. Of all things, she wanted to keep clear of anything connected with the police. Not only because of Jacky, but because of Ellard Lindon’s threats.

“I’d love to help the little boy,” she said slowly, “but I’d hate any publicity.”

“There wouldn’t be any publicity,” he assured her. “What’s your name, by the way?”

“Lisa. Short for Lisabeta.”

“Lisa,” he said, remembering the child with the duck. “Do you come from a big family, Lisa?”

“No. No, I don’t,” she said, hoping he wouldn’t ask her any more questions, so that she wouldn’t have to mention her sister. “Where do your parents live? Locally?”

“I ... haven’t any parents,” she said faintly.

“Oh, an orphan. I suppose that explains your passionate interest in children,” he smiled. “Are you an only child?”

She was saved answering that question by someone coming to speak to him, and when he joined her again, he seemed to have, forgotten about her family, and talked only of his hopes for the clinic.

After taking Lisa all over the grounds, he drove her back. “The afternoon has gone so quickly,” she said, smiling. “Thank you very much. I did enjoy it.”

“I’m sorry it couldn’t be a whole day, as I’d hoped, but I must get back to the hospital. Will you join me again some time?”

As Lisa hesitated, he said, “Perhaps you’ve other friends you’d rather go to the Gloucester Hotel with?” and a trace of the old sharp tones were there.

She flushed, remembering painfully that evening when she had been at that fabulous new hotel with Ellard.

“I’d like to go with you very much,” she said.

His face cleared, and he smiled again.

“Right, Lisa, your next free evening—and perhaps you could be a little less formal off duty?”

The idea of being less formal with Randall Carson made Lisa really smile, and for a heady moment they were in complete accord.

Sir Jules wasn’t happy about his wife’s jewelry.

“I know we’ve got the clip back, Annabel,” he barked at her, “but the fact remains, this carelessness of yours has got to stop. How could you lose the thing in the grounds? Rattling good thing Derek had his eyes open for once!”

“I didn’t lose it in the grounds,” Lady Frenton insisted angrily. After he was alone again, he made up his mind and sent for Derek. “Your mother says she didn’t wear the clip and couldn’t have dropped it in the grounds. Let’s have your story again, my boy.”

“Oh, look, Dad, you’ve got the thing back safe and sound. Isn’t that enough?” Derek said, in exasperation.

“No, it isn’t! I mean to get to the bottom of it. Now where exactly did you find it in the grounds?”

“Well, if you must know,” Derek said reluctantly, “I didn’t, but someone else did and asked me to give it back. To clear the whole thing up quickly, I agreed. Now do let’s drop the subject, Dad.”

It was the worst thing he could have said. Sir Jules was onto the affair like a dog on the scent of a rat.

“Don’t talk to me like that!” he thundered. “I won’t let the subject rest until I absolutely get to the bottom of it! Now you tell me it wasn’t you who found it, but you told a lie at first. You said you did!”

“Only because I was asked to do so,” Derek muttered.

“By whom?” his father barked. “Who is this person who finds things and keeps in the background without even claiming the reward for finding and returning them? Mighty suspicious!”

“Look, you asked me to get Lisa back, and I have.”

Sir Jules’s expression broke, and he started to look surprised and pleased, when he realized that his son was sidetracking the issue. “What’s Lisa got to do with this theft?”

“We don’t know that it
was
a theft, Dad. I’m trying to tell you—it was Lisa who found it, and asked me to return it on the quiet.
Now
do you see?”

“
Lisa
did? Why should she want it kept quiet?”

“Because she was already in hot water because one of the children from the hospital fell into Mother’s lily pond. You know what Mother’s like if someone touches the lilies or the fish,” Derek said, shrugging. “Carson was onto Lisa—he’s always picking on her, it seems—and made her go back to the hospital, so she said for heaven’s sake don’t let anyone know I forgot to turn in that thing when I found it.”