Cottage Hospital Page 12

  “We’re fine, dear.” Geoffrey went across and kissed the cool cheek, and Josie made no more response than if he had been a fly alighting on her face. “And how are you?” His embarrassment made him stiff, even pompous. “Keeping well, I hope?”

  “Yes thank you.”

  There was silence for a moment, Josie making no attempt to break it. “You’ve grown, darling,” Barbara said, feeling foolish suddenly.

  Josie nodded.

  “You – you like it here?” Barbara tried again.

  “Yes thank you.”

  “It seems very pleasant,” Barbara said, trying to be bright. “Lovely grounds – ”

  “Yes.”

  Almost in desperation, Barbara said, “we – thought you might like to go out to tea. Is there somewhere near we could get a good tea, do you know?”

  “Miss Le Courbet said there would be tea here for you later, and I have to have tea with the others,” Josie said flatly. “Thank you.”

  Unexpectedly, Geoffrey took over.

  “Jo – come and sit down. We want to talk to you, and it isn’t easy with you standing there – “ He smiled at her, almost appealingly. “Come and sit here with us.”

  Obediently, she came and perched herself on the edge of a chair to sit with hands folded on her lap staring solemnly at them both. Barbara, looking at her, felt a strange sense of fear. This wasn’t the child she had expected to see. Somehow, subtly, Josie had changed. Even her face looked different. The thinness of months before had altered to a sort of asceticism, the bones of her face throwing blue shadows on to her cheeks, her eyes seeming more deepset and remote than they ever used to. Her pale spun-sugar hair was pulled back sleekly, showing the high white forehead. She looked for all the world like a painting of a medieval saint, and Barbara was surprised when the simile sprang into her mind.

  Geoffrey was speaking:

  “Josie – we came to tell you something important, my dear. We – your aunt and I – we – “ He stumbled a little, “we are going to be married early next year, Josie, love. We want you to know and be happy about it.”

  She showed no sign of surprise, no flicker of interest. “I hope you will be very happy,” she said after a small pause.

  Barbara leaned forward anxiously. “Josie, darling, please – please, tell us what you feel about this. Do you mind? Do you dislike the idea, or – or are you glad for yourself?”

  Josie looked directly at her, her blue eyes opaque.

  “It doesn’t make much difference to me, does it?” she said flatly. “It’s up to you – nothing to do with me.”

  “Of course it’s got something to do with you,” Barbara said almost violently. “It matters so much to you that I – we would be very distressed if you didn’t like the idea. We – ”

  “Oh, you needn’t worry,” Josie said. “I’m not the sort to get into a state about things, not any more. I might have once – but – not any more.”

  Barbara could have cried at the elderly way she spoke, the way this child made her feel as though, to herself, life was an old, dull story. “No one of Josie’s age should be so calm, so sensible,” Barbara thought, almost weeping. “It’s as though someone froze her – ”

  “Darling,” Barbara said gently, “I’m not suggesting you get into a state. I’m just trying to find out how you feel about this – ”

  With sudden and unexpected tact, Geoffrey got up. “I’ll be back,” he said briefly. “I want to see Miss Le Courbet – “ and he went, leaving the two women, one so young yet so much a woman, alone together.

  Josie made no sign, showing no interest in his going.

  “Look, Josie,” Barbara got up herself, and walked over to the window, staring out into the darkening afternoon light. “This marriage – “ She could see Josie reflected against the glass of the window, and stared at the faint reflection as she went on. “I don’t know really how much you know about marriage at all – why people get married, or what they want from a marriage.” She ran a hand across her face briefly, and then went on, “For some, for – young people – marriage is an exciting and romantic thing. It will be for you, one day. But for others, it isn’t like that – ”

  She turned to look directly at the silent figure on the edge of the chair.

  “What I’m trying to tell you is that this – this marriage – between your father and myself isn’t a great romantic thing. I’m telling you this because I think it might help you to understand us better. I don’t know how – “ her voice was almost a cry, almost a plea for understanding. “Please, Josie, try to help me – we were – such friends once!”

  “But it is a romantic thing,” Josie said unexpectedly.

  “Why tell me lies? Why should you think it might make it better?” Barbara almost ran across the room to fall on her knees in front of the child, to stare up into her face.

  “It isn’t!” she cried. “If it were, I wouldn’t have said otherwise – you must see that! It’s as much for you as for me and your father! I want to look after you all – you and Jamie – and if you’ll let me take your mother’s place as best I can – ”

  Josie stared down at her in the dimming light, expression – puzzled expression – on her face for the first time.

  “For me?” she said wonderingly. “Me and Jamie?”

  Barbara nodded eagerly. “Yes, darling – I love you both very much – and I want to see you happy and looked after. That’s why – ”

  “I don’t believe you,” Josie said flatly.

  “Why don’t you? Have I ever lied to you before?”

  “Not with words – ”

  “How else could I lie?” Barbara was appealing. “I don’t know what you mean – ”

  Josie stood up suddenly, pushing past Barbara’s kneeling figure to stand and stare down at her.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said dully. “I hope you’ll both be happy,” and silently she turned and walked out of the room, closing the door softly behind her.

  “She saw us,” Barbara thought, sick and miserable.

  “That damned party – she saw Geoffrey afterwards – ”

  The door opened softly again, and Geoffrey stood peering across the room before hurrying over to her side, to help her to her feet.

  “Barbara! What happened? Where is she?”

  She sank miserably into a chair. “That night after the party,” she said baldly. “She saw you. Remember?”

  He flushed a hot red. “The night I – was so – ”

  “The night you tried to kiss me,” Barbara said clearly.

  “Before Mary died. I was afraid at the time that she had, and now I’m sure – ”

  “Oh my God!” Geoffrey turned and he, too, stared out of the big window. “Oh my God!”

  There was a pause. “Now what?” Barbara asked eventually.

  “How do you mean?”

  “Do we – go on with our plans? Or change them?”

  He turned then, to come and stand beside her. “We go on, of course,” he said with sudden decision. “Don’t you see? To tell her now that we won’t marry will make her believe that we – we feel guilty about it. She must understand that this is a – practical arrangement. If we go ahead, she will understand. If we don’t, she’ll think she was right and that we were having – having an affair before her mother’s death, and that it was because she knew that we gave in to her – blackmail.”

  “She isn’t trying to blackmail us, Geoffrey!” Barbara was angry. “That’s a horrible suggestion!”

  “I know she isn’t – now. But if we do change our plans, she might think we saw it as that! Don’t you see?” He pulled her to her feet, to hold her arms in a tight grasp and stare into her face. “She needs you so much, Barbara! The more upset she seems now, the more I am convinced I’m right!”

  She took a deep shuddering breath. Then she nodded miserably. “Yes – “ she murmured. “I think I understand what you mean – ”

  They drove back to the hospital in silence. Barb
ara felt exhausted, wrung dry of any feeling. There had been a brief moment when she had almost convinced herself that it would be better not to marry Geoffrey, better for Josie. A brief moment when it seemed as though her own happiness was possible, happiness with Daniel. But now she felt trapped, trapped by Josie’s anger – for anger it surely must be? – trapped by Geoffrey’s conviction that the child needed her as a stepmother.

  “Stepmother.” The word slid into her consciousness like an evil thing. A word that had, for centuries, carried unpleasant associations. “I’m to be a stepmother – and I’ll never have a child of my own – “ and in her misery, she hardly knew what distressed her most.

  Geoffrey wanted her to eat dinner with him, but she couldn’t have faced food at all.

  “I’ll have some milk later,” she said. “Forgive me, but I’m dreadfully tired. I’d rather go back to the hospital now.”

  And with quick understanding, he said no more, driving her to the hospital door and escorting her to the entrance.

  “Try not to worry, Barbara,” he said as he left her.

  “I’m certain I’m right. Once we are married, Josie will come round. She – she’ll soon be herself again.”

  And as she dragged her weary body up the stairs, Barbara told herself he was right. She was going to marry Geoffrey, and be Josie’s stepmother, and it was the right thing to do. And that was that. A loveless marriage, perhaps, but one day, a loving relationship with her husband’s daughter. And the greater promise of Daniel must be forgotten, put away into the recesses of her mind for good and all.

  But as she reached the corridor at the head of the stairs, and saw the thin pencil of light under Daniel’s door, she realised it wasn’t quite all settled. She owed Daniel an explanation, and her nature wouldn’t let her avoid offering that explanation. He had asked her to marry him that afternoon. She had never made a direct answer, and even though that hadn’t been her fault, she felt she must tell him why she was to marry Geoffrey, try to explain that she had meant no unkindness to Daniel in the way she had, by implication, refused him.

  So, with her head high, she tapped on the panels of his door, and stood waiting for him to answer.

  Chapter Thirteen

  His gruff “Come in!” made her heart sink for a moment, so that she wanted to turn and run to the security of her own room. But she opened the door quietly, and stood for a second blinking a little in the light.

  He was sitting at the desk in the corner of the room, his head burnished to a deep auburn by the pool of light from the lamp beside him. There were books all over the desk, and a pile of writing paper in front of him, and he looked up at her with the vacant gaze of a man who has been pulled away from deep concentration. Then, as he saw her, he dropped the pen he was holding, and smoothed his hair with an oddly awkward gesture.”

  Er – Barbara – “ He got up, and stood straight, his stocky body silhouetted against the lamplight.

  “May I talk to you please, Daniel?” Her voice came with an effort, shaking a little.

  “Why – er – yes – yes, of course – ”

  He swept a pile of books off the only other chair in the room, and Barbara sat down gratefully, trying to hide the way her knees were shaking.

  There was a stilted silence for a long moment, then Barbara, summoning all the control she had, said in a low voice, “I’d like to explain – about this afternoon – ”

  “There isn’t anything to explain,” he said gruffly, “I – I’m a fool, I suppose. I shouldn’t have let you leave the Royal as you did, without – oh well.” He grinned lopsidedly. “All those years, when I should have realised, and then to let you go off and fall in love with someone else. Serves me right.”

  “But you don’t understand – “ Barbara said desperately. “It isn’t like that – ”

  “Isn’t like what?” He looked up sharply from the pipe he had started to fill. “You did say you were engaged, didn’t you?”

  “Oh, yes, I’m engaged,” she said drearily. “But – look, let me start at the beginning, and just hear me out, will you? No interruptions.”

  He nodded, and sat down himself. Then, with her hands clasped firmly on her lap, and with her eyes fixed on them so that she would not have to look at Daniel’s face, she told him.

  She told him everything. The hostility between herself and Mary, the way Josie had burst out with her dislike of her mother, the way Barbara herself felt about Josie, and to a lesser extent, Jamie. Geoffrey’s behaviour after the party, and the fact that Josie had been a witness to it. With her voice dropped lower, she tried to tell him how she had envied Mary her position and security, how she had suddenly feared her own lonely future, and then of her guilt when Mary had died while the two of them were on such bad terms.

  Telling him about Geoffrey’s proposal, and what it involved, was even harder. But with her usual honesty, she made no attempt to gloss over the financial benefit to herself, while still trying to make him see why she felt so strongly about Josie’s need for her. She finished by telling him of what had happened with Josie that afternoon, and let her voice die away at last into silence.

  He made no move, keeping his unlit pipe stuck firmly between his teeth. When at last she raised her eyes to his, she felt, almost like a physical blow, the look of cold anger on his face.

  “You don’t understand,” she said flatly.

  “I understand all too well.” His voice was harsh.

  “You – you’re marrying a man you don’t care for.”

  “But you must see why – “ she said almost piteously. It suddenly mattered quite dreadfully that Daniel should not only understand, but agree that she was right – that she had no other course to take than the one she contemplated.

  “Why? To make life comfortable for a man who cares so little for you that he’d marry you knowing you don’t love him? For a child who probably doesn’t need you as much as you think she does?”

  “But she does!”

  “Look, Barbara. I’m no psychiatrist, and I’ve never met the girl. But from what you say about her, it’s pretty clear to me that she needs more than your high-minded sacrifice to help her. She’s sick with guilt because her mother died after she said she wanted her to. Do you honestly think you can help that guilt by making the rest of her wild fantasy come true?”

  “Wild fantasy?” Barbara said wonderingly.

  “For God’s sake – “ His anger boiled over suddenly.

  “Use your brains, you idiot! The child says she wishes her own mother was dead, and that you were her mother instead. And then her mother is killed – and you propose to become her mother instead! Are you trying to make the child feel like a murderer?”

  “Oh no – no,” Barbara whispered, horror in her eyes.

  “It can’t be like that – ”

  He stood up, and began to pace around the shabby room. “This is impossible, Barbara. I’m no one to influence you. Perhaps you are right – I don’t know. All I know is that I love you. And while I’d accept your marriage to someone else you cared for, the thought of you getting tied up to someone you don’t love and who doesn’t love you makes me physically sick. So don’t ask me what you should do – ”

  “I’m not asking you.” Barbara was stung. “I’m just trying to tell you why – why I couldn’t accept your – accept you. I wanted you to know that it wasn’t because – ”

  She stopped suddenly. What was she going to say? That she did care for him? That she would have fallen into his arms if he had only asked her sooner?

  “There isn’t much point in this,” she said bitterly.

  “It’s all a mess.”

  “Mess is the right word.” His anger was still simmering. “But if you want to make a mess of your life, it’s your business. I think you’re being a damned fool, but that’s you, isn’t it? You think too much – and you’re so busy thinking, you haven’t time to have any sense.”

  “I’m trying to do the right thing,” she said dully. “If
that’s thinking too much – ”

  “If you spent less time trying to do the right thing, as you put it, and did what you wanted to do, perhaps you’d make less misery for yourself – and for other people – ”

  “It’s you that’s being stupid,” she flared. “It’s all so easy for you, isn’t it? If I did what I wanted, I’d marry you, and that’s what you want –” She stopped, aghast at herself.

  He stared at her for a brief moment, and then, moving with a speed that almost frightened her, he was beside her, pulling her into his arms with rough urgency, kissing her as she had never been kissed in her life before. She tried to resist, tried to regain her composure, but it was useless. She found herself responding with a passion she never knew she had in her, clinging to him desperately, losing herself in the strange rush of new sensations, new feelings, so that her whole body seemed to melt in a fire of emotion.

  “Christ, Barbara,” he was muttering, “you can’t marry this man – you can’t – I love you – Barbara –”

  But with an almost superhuman effort, she pulled away from him, to lean, breathless and near tears, against the door.

  “No –” She pushed him away with both hands. “No –”

  He clenched his fists with sudden rage. “Barbara! What’s the matter with you? Are you mad? How can you let a man you don’t love marry you? How can you consider it? – to have his children –”

  She closed her eyes in an effort to stop seeing his face. “It won’t be like that – it won’t be that sort of marriage –”

  It was as though she had flung iced water in his face. “Not that sort of marriage?” he said slowly at last. “Not that sort of marriage? You mean –”

  She opened her eyes and looked at him then. “No,” she said bitterly. “No children. No – love of that kind at all. Does that make it better?”

  “Better?” He was shouting now. “Better? It’s worse! He buys you as housekeeper, is that it? Denies you the right to have children of your own, so that you can look after him and his blasted children? What are you? A lump of – of earth? You’re a woman, Barbara – a real woman. What sort of life are you planning, for God’s sake? Sterile –”