Cottage Hospital Page 13

  “Stop it!” In her pain, in her own state of turmoil, she did something that shocked her – she hit him, pulling her arm back to throw every scrap of her strength into the blow.

  He stood there, flaming-faced and with eyes that glittered with fury.

  “Get out of here.” His voice was choked. “Get out before –” And he pulled the door open, and nearly threw her into the corridor.

  She crept to her room like a whipped child. Her body ached and trembled, her head was spinning with words, her face was twisted into lines of pain and misery. She almost collapsed on to her bed, to dissolve into floods of tears, sobbing as though her body would tear apart with her grief. She wept for herself, for Daniel, for the sudden realisation that she had promised to deny herself for always the passion she now knew she had. Daniel’s touch, his urgent kisses, had woken her in a way she thought she could never be woken, had opened a door for a brief second – a door that she herself was closing. Because, through her tears, through her misery, she knew she could not go through that door, to the life and promise of Daniel. She had told Geoffrey she would marry him – and that was that. No backing out.

  And when the storm of tears had subsided, when she could think again, she knew why she had to marry Geoffrey. It wasn’t the security. Indeed, the thought of that now made her want to scream to the world that it didn’t matter. It was Josie, Josie and her guilt, if that was what it was. Barbara, confused and desperately unhappy, clung to that thought. She, and only she, could help Josie now. No one else. Even if Daniel was right, and Josie did feel as though she had herself killed her mother, then Barbara, who had heard her say she wanted to be rid of her mother, was the only one who could understand, and help her.

  When she fell asleep at last, her conviction had crystallised firmly at last. She would marry Geoffrey, come hell or high water.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The next few weeks were misery for Barbara. She worked through each day dully, with little of the pleasure she was used to finding in her work. It was this that was hardest of all to bear. She had been prepared to find working with Daniel difficult, and though his cool professional attitude towards her hurt, she was able to understand, and even be grateful for the professional relationship that made it possible to work with a man after a stormy emotional passage such as they had had. But work – the work she loved, that had always been her own cure for her personal troubles – that this should let her down, as it were, lose its attraction – that was really painful.

  But, with the habit of years, the training that was now so much a part of her, she managed to hide her distress, and carry on apparently as usual. The little hospital filled up for a few weeks, with the early bronchitis attacks, the occasional pneumonia patient, and the routine minor surgery that the local people saved to have dealt with until after the summer rush of visitors to the town was over.

  Early in November, she went into Dover to see the consultant at the hospital there, and to have a barium meal to discover whether, in fact, her ulcer, the ulcer that had brought her to Sandleas, was cured.

  It was. She found this ironic, as she listened to the consultant telling her his opinion.

  “You’re quite fit again, Miss Hughes, though I must say you’re a bit thinner than you should be. It wouldn’t hurt you to put on a few pounds. But apart from that, there’s no reason why you should not return to theatre work. I gather you want to go back to London again to work?”

  “I did,” Barbara said. “But now – I’m getting married, so I shall be staying in Sandleas.”

  “Congratulations! Though I hope you won’t give up work immediately? Good nurses are hard to come by! Unless of course, you decide to start a family right away!” and he had laughed cheerfully, and written “Discharged” at the foot of her case notes.

  Sitting on the train on her way back to Sandleas, Barbara squirmed at the memory of his words. A family. Children of her own. How much would she regret throwing away for ever the possibility of having her own babies? Before Daniel had arrived at Sandleas, the thought had never entered her mind. Children were delightful, of course, but she had never really imagined herself as a mother. But since Daniel had come back, she had found herself thinking of children more and more. Children with red hair and stocky square little bodies –

  But this was dangerous thinking. She had no right to such thoughts. She was to marry Geoffrey.

  “I suppose there’s a lot to be said for a peaceful unemotional marriage,” she told herself defiantly, watching the green Kentish countryside slide by. “No arguments, no misery.” She remembered the friends of her training days who had married, remembered the emotional storms and miseries so many of them had seemed to go through with their new husbands, and comforted herself with the thought that she would escape all that. But it was cold comfort.

  December came, bringing with it a flurry of activity in the hospital. Patients who were well enough spent long hours making Christmas decorations for the wards, Matron immured herself in the office with long lists of the food she would have to buy for the patients’ and staff’s Christmas celebrations, and nurses could be discovered making Christmas presents in the kitchen when they should have been cleaning cupboards or making beds.

  Barbara tried to throw herself into these preparations, but it wasn’t easy. She would be sorting through last year’s decorations, or collecting the new ones that patients had made, when Daniel would come into the ward to see a patient, and she would feel obscurely guilty about what she had been doing. Which was absurd, because in the old days at the Royal he had been as much involved with these tasks as the nursing staff. But now he seemed not to notice that Christmas was in the air, concentrating on work and work only. He never said a word to Barbara that was not to do with purely medical matters.

  And then, it was December the nineteenth, and Josie was due home for the holidays. Jamie had arranged to spend Christmas with a friend in Scotland, but Barbara nonetheless promised herself that she would do her best to make Christmas in the big comfortable, yet dreary, Martin house as cheerful as she could. On the day Josie was due home, she took a taxi to the house, loaded with decorations for the tree Geoffrey had promised to order, and with her own gifts for the household.

  Josie was already there when Barbara let herself into the house. She could see the pile of luggage beside the front door. She dropped her parcels in the hall, and went up to the yellow room at the top of the stairs to see her niece.

  She had already unpacked some of her bags and was sitting on her bed writing a letter when Barbara knocked and put her head round the door.

  “Hello, darling!” she said with a forced cheerfulness. “Nice to be home?”

  Josie looked up, and then carefully put her letter away before answering.

  “Hello, Auntie Barbara. Yes thank you.” But there was no warmth in her voice, no flicker of real pleasure.

  Barbara wanted desperately to sit beside Josie, to put her arms round her, to try to break down some of this icy reserve, but she knew instinctively that this would be wrong. It was no use to try and rush Josie – she must be allowed to thaw in her own good time.

  “And I’m sure she will,” Barbara told herself optimistically, later that evening, when she and Josie and Geoffrey sat down together for dinner.

  It wasn’t an easy meal. Barbara did her best to make conversation, but Josie blocked her every attempt and Geoffrey, too, seemed abstracted. As the meal progressed, Barbara would catch him looking at her with an unusual intensity, as though he were trying to reach a decision, and when he caught her eye, he would drop his own gaze in a somehow childish sort of confusion.

  After dinner, Josie went up to her room. “I’ve got some letters to write,” she said sullenly, when Geoffrey asked her what she was doing. And when Barbara tried to speak, to persuade Josie to spend the evening with them in the drawing-room, he shook his head at her, and let Josie go up to shut herself in her room, alone.

  “She’s better alone, if she wants t
o be,” he said, as he followed Barbara into the drawing-room, and watched her start to pour the coffee. “And I want to talk to you, my dear. I seem to have seen so little of you lately –”

  “I’ve been rather busy,” Barbara said defensively. “Christmas preparations for the hospital and all that –”

  But she knew she lied. She had been avoiding Geoffrey, making excuses not to go to the house, finding reasons for not going out to dinner with him in the town’s restaurants, on the occasions he had asked her to. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to see him so much as that she wanted time to herself, to get used to the idea of marrying him, for the fact that she was engaged to this man still seemed strange. And behind her reasoning, she had instinctively been holding on to her independence for as long as she could, because the time when she would no longer be her own mistress, but the wife of Geoffrey Martin, Solicitor, was coming very near. But she hardly realised this herself.

  “Drink?” He brought her a liqueur, and settled into his chair with his own usual glass of brandy. They sat silently for a while, Barbara sipping her coffee, Geoffrey staring abstractedly into the fire.

  Barbara was just beginning to wonder if he did in fact want to talk about anything special, when he pulled himself to his feet, and went out into the hall to bring in his briefcase.

  He took a sheaf of papers out of it, and put them on the coffee table in front of Barbara.

  “These are the papers to do with the marriage settlement, and so on,” he said awkwardly. “If you could sign them, I’ll get Mrs. Lester to come in and witness your signature.”

  Barbara looked at the official typed documents with distaste. “Must I?” she asked diffidently. “This all seems so mercenary, somehow. I’d really rather not –”

  He came and stood close beside her, to look down on to her bent head. “It is necessary, my dear,” he said, his voice oddly thick. “We did say this was to be a business arrangement –”

  She pulled away from him, to get up from her seat and turn to gaze into the fire. “I know –” she said in a low voice. “But it’s all – so –”

  She felt him behind her, felt his breath on her bent neck.

  “You dislike the idea of a business-like marriage?” There was an odd urgency in the question.

  She bit her lip. “I suppose I do, really,” she said, trying to understand her own feelings, wanting to explain that the thought of signatures on official documents made her embarrassed.

  “Thank God,” he said softly, and almost before she realised it, he had pulled her round, to hold her firmly in his arms, pinning her against him with sudden strength. “I don’t want that sort of marriage either, my darling,” he said, his voice low, yet exultant. “I must have been mad to try and persuade myself that I did. I’ve been trying to tell myself that you wanted it this way, that you didn’t care for me at all, but now –”

  She was almost dumb with the shock. Not wanting to sign documents had nothing to do with her feelings for Geoffrey. She knew that – but he didn’t.

  “He couldn’t think I meant I cared for him,” she thought in sudden wild panic, and tried to pull away from him. But he was too strong for her. His head was down, his lips hot on hers, his whole body straining against hers in a way that made her want to scream with fear.

  “No – no,” she managed to get her head away, struggling to escape from his grasp. “No –”

  And then, to her sick horror, she saw Josie. She was standing very still and erect, her eyes blazing by the door to the hall, her face so altered with anger that she looked old.

  Geoffrey, suddenly aware of Barbara’s rigid body, looked over his shoulder. He dropped his arms from Barbara, and turned to look at his daughter.

  “Josie –” He passed his hand over his hair. “Josie –”

  “You make me sick!”

  Her voice was low, but the intensity of loathing in it made it beat on Barbara’s ears like a scream.

  “You – you’re my father!”

  And then, almost to her surprise, Barbara heard her own voice, cool and clear.

  “Josie, come here.” Josie ignored her, staring only at Geoffrey.

  “Josie! Do as you are told and come here.” The unexpected authority in her aunt’s voice made Josie turn to look at her, and almost as though against her will, she came and stood in front of them both.

  Barbara thrust her hands into the pockets of her suit jacket, more to hide their trembling than anything else.

  As she stood looking at the tight, angry face, it was as though everything whirled and then clicked into place. At the back of her mind she could hear Daniel’s voice saying “wild fantasy”. She could see herself as she had been these past weeks, blinded by her own stubbornness, by her fears for Josie. And she knew, really knew at last, what she should do.

  Then she spoke.

  “Josie,” she said gently, “you’re very young, and you have had a good deal to suffer and understand this past few months. But young as you are, I think you are able to understand what I am going to say, and I expect you to listen with an attempt at intelligence. We have tried to treat you with kid gloves, but the time for that is past. You are now going to listen to me, and listen with calmness and good sense. Right?”

  Josie looked back at her for a moment. Then she said, “Will you tell me what I want to know – not just what you think I should know?”

  “I shall try to,” Barbara said with a forced calmness.

  “All right.” And Josie sat down on the pouffe by the fire.

  “When I first came to live here, last spring, you were finding life difficult with your mother.” It was a statement, not a question. There was a fleeting look of pain on Josie’s face, but Barbara hurried on.

  “And then I arrived, an outsider, and yet an outsider you knew, and someone who had a job you thought was a glamorous one. And like so many girls of your age, you got a – a crush on me. Am I right?”

  Josie flushed scarlet. “I – I –”

  “Don’t try to answer if you find it difficult. But I think you understand me. Then, one evening, you were particularly upset with your mother because of something she had said about me, and you told me that you wanted your mother to go away – that you wished I were your mother instead.”

  Josie had dropped her head so that her fine hair flopped forward to hide her face. Barbara, acutely aware of Geoffrey standing rigid and silent beside her, took a deep breath and went on.

  “And then your mother and I – argued. And we parted on bad terms. And you were angry with both of us. Very angry. You felt I had run out on you when you wanted me to stay, and you hated your mother as well for letting it happen. And then –”

  Barbara’s voice faltered, then strengthened. “And then there was the accident. And because you loved your mother, even though you had been angry with her, you felt that her death had been your fault.”

  Josie, her head still bent, said nothing, but her narrow shoulders moved a little.

  Barbara fell on her knees beside the child, to look up into the face hidden in the floppy hair. “Darling Josie, you have no need to feel like that – really you haven’t! What happened to your mother would have happened whatever you had felt or thought. You had nothing to do with it! You must understand that. Nothing at all.”

  And at last Josie was crying, tears falling unheeded down her face as she rocked her small body to and fro in an ecstasy of tears, while Barbara, her heart light with relief of seeing the unchildish reserve broken at last, held her close, letting the tears fall as they would, making no attempt to stop them.

  Gradually, the sobs lessened. Then Josie said, her voice choked and almost too quiet to be heard. “But you’re going to marry Daddy – you wanted Mummy to die too –”

  “Oh Josie, Josie – I didn’t!” Barbara put a hand under Josie’s chin, forcing her to raise her head and look at her. “But when your father asked me to marry him, he told me that it was because he wanted me to look after you – to take your mot
her’s place. I was foolish enough to think I could, darling, but I think I know now that I couldn’t possibly –”

  Josie, still breathing the uneven dragging gulps of her tears looked over Barbara’s shoulder at Geoffrey, still standing unmoving by the fire.

  “But he loves you!” she cried, her voice full of accusation. “I’ve seen you – that party – and now –”

  “Yes, Josie, I do.” Geoffrey’s harsh voice was a shock, almost. “Is that so dreadful? You love Barbara too, don’t you?”

  “Auntie Bar is my aunt,” Josie said flatly.

  Barbara got to her feet, wearily. “Yes, Jo,” she said gently. “I’m your aunt. And I hope you will always love me as an aunt. But you need never try to think of me as a replacement for your mother, because I’m not going to try to be one.” And she looked directly at Geoffrey, trying to show her compassion for his distress in her face.

  He looked back at her, and then with a voice so full of pain that Barbara could have wept, he said, “You won’t?”

  “No Geoffrey.” She was gentle. “I said I would marry you because of Josie. And for no other reason. But that’s no basis for a marriage. Even if Josie really wanted me as a stepmother, it wouldn’t work. I need – so much more. To try to be happy with you would be impossible – and unfair to you. I can’t do it. I’m sorry.”

  He said nothing, staring at her, looking at her face as though he would never see it again, as though he wanted to imprint every line of it on his memory.

  Barbara looked again at Josie. “I’m going away, Jo. A long way away. One day I’ll see you again, but not for a long time – not until you’ve grown up, probably. You will have to make yourself happy, darling. No one can do that for you. I was arrogant enough to think I could, but I know I can’t.”

  There was no more to say. It had all been said, even if not in so many words. For Barbara, looking at Geoffrey’s ravaged face, her own stupidity in ever thinking she could marry him made her hate herself. She had wanted to help these two, wanted to make their lives happy even at the expense of her own happiness.