My Surgeon Neighbour (3 page)

“Yes. She inherited the place from our antique neighbour who died, and she is hanging on to it like a leech.”

“But I thought you meant to get it when the old girl died? Haven’t you made an offer for it?”

“Several which I thought should be beyond her dreams of avarice, if she had any. But she won’t sell.”

“Nonsense!
Everyone
has their price, and she’s only hanging out for hers.”

“If I knew her price she should have it. As it is, she plans to set up as a Home for convalescent children just out of hospital, a scheme of which, right on our doorstep, Kate takes the dimmest view.”

“Can you wonder?” retorted Jurice. “I’d say she has every reason, considering the wonderful reputation Greystone has. But how did I miss the type yonder? Schoolmarm or budding ward-sister, spoiling for authority, written all over your new neighbour, wouldn’t you say?”

“No, there I can’t agree,” said Oliver judicially. “Not to the naked eye, that is. She’s pretty and fresh and skipping-young enough to look at. Without your glamor of course. But designed for living, definitely.”

Jurice’s eyes narrowed. “Then why doesn’t she do it—live, I mean?”

“Because for the moment, I gather, her idea of living is all tied up with her job. And if she’s speaking the truth, she finds it enough.” He broke off and drove Jurice towards her own car with a small push before getting into his own. “Run along now and I’ll meet you in my room for a drink in ten minutes.”

But Jurice preferred to wait while he garaged his car behind hers, then tucked her hand beneath his elbow for their crossing to the house, neither of them aware that Sarah, from the staircase-window of Monckton, was suffering a pang of envy for their friendship.

In the big echoing house she felt suddenly very much alone. Temporarily she and Oliver Mansbury had seemed to understand each other. But then the glitter and sparkle that was Jurice Grey had happened. And by now, she was convinced, she had been dismissed from his mind.

She guessed he had cut short a suggestion that he should ask one of the local doctors to act as M.O. to the Home. But when she had waited for some days to hear from him, she took that problem to Dick. Or rather, when she mentioned it casually to him, he took it from her in his usual overpowering way.

“I think I know just the chap for you,” Dick told her. “Name of Carrage. Young; only recently joined the Ackland—Berrider outfits as junior partner. He has a small boy but no wife in evidence, and when he came to my father a while back instead of Dr. Berrider, we both took to him. If you wrote to him and asked
him
to come and see you to discuss it, I’m convinced you’d like him too.”

Sarah did at once. Later she was to find Dr. Steven Carrage’s manner was less ‘bedside’ in the accepted sense than it was a projection of real sympathy for his patients, allied to a confidence which ‘got over’ to them. And though that first interview was only a matter of his questions and answers and advice to her, she sensed at once that here was a man and a doctor she would trust.

When he came a second time to bring a list of the things he recommended for her First Aid cabinet, she asked him to stay for coffee and they talked. Though he hadn’t been a St. Anselm’s man himself, he told her her training hospital was a fine place. He laughed with her over Monckton’s metamorphosis from a Victorian stronghold to the light, airy place it would be soon, and his approval of her plans and her hopes warmed her through. The next time he had his seven-year old boy Tony with him in the car, and when Sarah welcomed them both he confided something of their circumstances.

In the big dayroom, Great Aunt Lydia’s former drawing-room, Tony, round-spectacled and enquiring, gravitated at once to the bookshelf of children’s books which Sarah had installed and was quickly deep in one of them.

His father regarded him thoughtfully. “A bit of a problem, that,” he confided in Sarah. “I mean, his complete absorption in books to the exclusion of
things
most kids of his age care about. He could read almost anything at six, and now I’m to
rn
between letting
him
discover books to his heart’s content, and mollifying all the well-meaning souls who prophesy woe. ‘That child needs keeping back. He’ll
ruin
his brain’.”

Sarah laughed. “There are always people ready to say that, aren’t there? I suppose it’s because so many children are
spoon-fed
on TV that the ones who really prefer to get things from books appear as freaks of nature. But if Tony were mine—” her eyes went a shade wistfully to the bent bullet head with its downy fair hair—“I know I’d let him enjoy himself in his own way within reason. I’d think I was very wrong if I tried to force his interest away from books.”

“Yes, well—that’s the way I lean too,” agreed Tony’s father. “But reading is essentially a solitary ploy, isn’t it, and sometimes I wonder whether I shouldn’t take
him
from it in order to make him mix more and play more
—
use his hands and his limbs and look about him at the real world instead of the one he sees through the printed page.”

“But he’s happy, isn’t he?” Sarah asked.

Dr. Carrage looked for a moment as if the question had not arisen in his mind. Then, “Yes, he’s happy enough, I think, though I’m afraid he has had too much of my company for too long. Until recently I was doing locum work, which has entailed our living in rooms and moving from place to place. And though I’ve a service flat now and a daily nanny, I still feel he is too much with grownups out of school hours.”

“Yes, perhaps,” Sarah agreed, then added diffidently, “You know, doctor, I’d always welcome him here when he’s not at school. Say, after tea or on Saturdays or any other time when he’s at a loose end. He could read, or play with my babes to his heart’s content, and if his nanny could bring him, someone here could see
him
home.”

“Or I could tote him myself either way,” his father put in. “You know, Miss Sanstead, that’s a very generous offer and I’m going to take you at your word and accept it. I may not have to trouble you with him often. But whenever I do, I shall know that under your eye he’ll be getting as much play-companionship as I could want for him. Believe me, I’m very grateful.”

They parted on that note, but before they met again Sarah’s thoughts frequently went back to Tony Carrage and his father. How blankly the man had met her query as to Tony’s happiness! It was something he clearly had not asked
him
self often. Yet surely Tony’s mother would have done and would have known the answer? Sarah’s quick sympathy went out to both father and son, to their lack of blessed human relationship which was their right but of which some cruel circumstance—separation? divorce? death?—had seemingly deprived them.

The other problem posed to her by Oliver Mansbury was to be resolved, not by him nor by Dick, but in an unexpected and somewhat disturbing way.

One morning, shortly before she was expecting her first small guests, Martha showed in a young woman, a Mrs. Cosford, whom Sarah knew to be employed as assistant housekeeper at Greystones, next door. Puzzled as to what her errand could be, Sarah’s “Yes, Mrs. Cosford?” invited her to explain it, which she did with some hesitation, her hands twisting nervously in her lap.

“It’s like this, Miss Sanstead,” she said. “Mrs. Beacon engaged me as assistant to Miss Bucknall, the housekeeper next door, and sometimes I stand in as a nursing orderly too. Because I’m partly trained, you see. I meant to qualify, and I did two years in hospital. But then I had to go home to nurse my mother. When she died, I married, then lost my husband five years later, since when I’ve had to work.”

Though she didn’t understand why she was hearing the story, Sarah asked, “You didn’t go back and finish your training?”

“No. I had my little girl, Jean, she’s nearly eight now, and I was lucky to get a job at once where I could have her with me. But then my employers went abroad and I took this job at Greystones, where Jean couldn’t come. But my sister-in-law took her, and that was all right and I was able to see her quite often. But now Mary, my sister-in-law, has to take in her own mother and can’t keep Jean any longer.”

“And so?” prompted Sarah.

“Well, I explained all this to Mrs. Beacon, you see, hoping she would say she’d stretch a point to enable Jean to join me next door. But she didn’t. She said she was sorry but that I must see it was impossible and that if I couldn’t make other arrangements for Jean, perhaps I would prefer to leave.”

“I see,” said Sarah quietly. “And have you other plans for Jean?”

Mrs. Cosford shook her head. “No. That is, not unless—Oh Miss Sanstead, this is rather difficult and you’ll probably think me awful to ask, but as I’m half trained and I worked for a lot of my time in a children’s ward in hospital,
could
you make use of me here to help you in your Home? So that—so that I could have Jean with me, because it needn’t be that she would have to have a room you would need for your patients. She could share mine, and of course she would go to school. You could take her keep out of what you would pay me. Oh dear, you must forgive me for asking. But when I heard Mr. Mansbury telling Mrs. Beacon that you would need someone besides Martha Gould—it was just an idea I had, d’you see?” she appealed.

Sarah did see, but not without misgivings. “Well, I do need help and if you came to me, Jean could certainly come too. But you do see the difficulty that Mrs. Beacon might not care for your leaving her to come to me?”

Mrs. Cosford’s eyes widened. “Why should she? She as good as gave me notice; put a pistol to my head!”

Unconvinced and not relishing applying to Mrs. Beacon for a reference for her late employee, Sarah agreed slowly, “Well, as long as that was the way of it, that you wouldn’t be walking out on her, perhaps it’s all right. I’ll certainly consider it and ask you to come in later for briefing on the work if I want you.” She paused, then asked, “Did either Mrs. Beacon or Mr. Mansbury know you meant to come to see me, Mrs. Cosford?”

“Not Mrs. Beacon. She has held herself a bit aloof, offended-like, since. But I did venture to speak to Mr. Mansbury and when he said he would go ahead if he were me, well, I did,” Mrs. Cosford admitted.

“I see,” said Sarah again, then smiled and rose. “I think you can take it as more or less settled, then,” she added, and for the moment was amply rewarded by the gratitude in the other’s dark eyes.

But before she had got around to applying to Mrs. Beacon for a reference for Mrs. Cosford the action was carried into her camp by another visit from Mrs. Beacon.

This time, too, that lady paid no lip-service to preliminaries but came straight to her point by demanding of Sarah, “May I ask, Miss Sanstead, what you mean by alienating a member of my staff
—
I’m speaking of Alice Cosford, of course
—
and enticing her out of my employ into yours?”

Taken aback, Sarah flushed hotly. “Mrs. Beacon, I’ve done nothing of the sort!” she declared.

“Then you deny you propose to take her on as your assistant here when you open your Home to patients?”

“I’m considering doing so, yes.”

“But surely you understand the co
mm
on etiquette between one employer and another; that this sort of thing simply isn’t done?”

Sarah gathered her forces. “I don’t know,” she said more evenly, “what you mean by ‘this sort of
thin
g’ I did nothing at all to induce Mrs. Cosford to come to me.
She
approached
me
after understanding that she had had her notice from you.”

“She was given the choice of staying on!”

“But surely at a price she felt she couldn’t pay, in duty to her little girl?”

Mrs. Beacon shrugged slightly. “That was for her to arrange. And I hope you don’t suggest it was
my
duty to take the child in?”

“Not at all. It wasn’t to be expected of you,” said Sarah, hoping the barb she intended had gone home. “But having given Mrs. Cosford your ultimatum, you can hardly blame her for choosing to leave you and go elsewhere.”

“Ah, ‘elsewhere’ perhaps. But I’d have thought I needn’t expect that my very next-door neighbour would encourage her into her employ even before she had left mine.”

“If I may say so,” retorted Sarah cuttingly, “you sound as if Mrs. Cosford were defecting with your top secrets to a rival firm. Whereas the simple facts are that, having accepted her notice from you, she applied to me for a job
—
and that, I might add, on Mr. Mansbury’s advice to her to do so.”

Mrs. Beacon’s jaw dropped. “On
—
Oliver’s
?
My cousin advised her to come to you?”

“So Mrs. Cosford tells me. And no doubt because he knew and had already told me that sooner or later I must enlist the kind of partly skilled nursing help that she can offer me. I think,” Sarah concluded, “it should prove quite a happy arrangement all round.”

“I hope you may find it so. But in the circumstances I daresay you won’t expect a reference from me for Mrs. Cosford?”