You Took My Heart (9 page)

He did not speak for a moment, and when he did his words were slow with pain and with incredulity. “You mean you don’t care for me that way,
Joanna?”

She nodded, still without looking at him. “There’s too much in the way,” she explained. “I couldn’t face it. All this divorce and everything. It would just spoil everything for me. Maybe I’m a coward. I don’t know. But I hate it the way it is.”

“You mean if it hadn’t been for Vera things might have been different?” he asked, his face going hard suddenly, his eyes angry.

“Yes, they might have been very different,” Joan conceded.

“They wouldn’t,” he told her sharply. “If you loved me at all nothing would make any difference—not this or anything else.”

“Maybe so,” she answered in a very ghost of a voice, turning now to walk out of the stable because the luncheon gong was sounding and they must go in and eat. They must sit side by side at the long table and somehow contrive to talk naturally, to smile, even.

Garth walked with her in silence across the yard. “I knew all along you hadn’t forgiven me, I think,” he said bitterly, “that you never would forgive me. Maybe that’s why I hadn’t the courage to tell you about Vera years ago.”

She didn’t reply to that. Under her drooped lashes her eyes were stinging with tears that must not be shed. Garth mustn’t know how madly far from the truth was this thing he was saying about forgiveness. How madly far from the truth her own few pitiful words had been. Garth must never know. Her hands were wet, thrust into her pocket of her riding breeches. Her heart was a hot burning pain. He must go from her thinking she did not love him because that was the only way he would ever go—to that other love, that other loyalty. He could have his son now. Claim him before the world, give him all that his proud heart longed to give.

This was the right thing. This was the way it had to be. She was so sure of it, and it was only that clear, hard certainty which gave her the courage to get through the hours that followed. It wasn’t only right for Garth—but for herself. She couldn’t have snatched at her happiness with the ghost of that small boy haunting her. She couldn’t have faced the years watching Garth’s hidden hunger for the thing she had robbed him of. Ivan meant so much more to Garth that he yet seemed to realize. Or if he had realized it he had squashed down the knowledge because of his love for herself, his longing, for her. But no matter how much he loved her, it wouldn’t have worked. Not with Ivan shut out—Ivan doing without all those vital things ordinary little boys like Peter Sparkes had as a matter of course ... Ivan even without his rightful name, because the giving it to him in such circumstances would have been too much for him, too great a psychological hurt. Vera and Garth, knowing Ivan, had decided that together and no doubt they had been right.

But what would they decide together now, Joan wondered wildly, managing somehow to smile steadily her goodbye, standing in the thin wintry sunlight beside the gleaming car.

Garth looked white and hurt as he turned to her. “Good-bye, Joan,” he said. “A pretty grim good-bye, my dear, but it can’t be helped, I suppose. Only I never would have believed that you, of all people, would have been shallow enough to throw everything aside for the sake of a quite ordinary little unpleasantness, a modern divorce! It’s still hard for me to understand it.”

“I’m sorry, Garth,” she managed to say casually, only just managing it because the car was already moving and he wouldn’t see the quivering of her lips nor hear the one great sob which shook her thin, childish shoulders as she turned back to the house.

She would pull herself together and get indoors somehow to spend the rest of the afternoon with Mrs. Perros and the doctor. They would sit round the cosy log fire chatting, dozing a little perhaps until tea was brought in. Tomorrow they would go in to Shadworth for shopping and lunch, and in the evening she would pack her suitcase and get into the train once more for London and St. Angela’s.

Life would go on, because life, always did go on, Joan supposed. And some time in the dim distant future she might become accustomed to this deadly ache that was her heart.

CHAPTER NINE

Joan
had been a week on duty in the children’s block of St. Angela’s when she saw Garth again. She was putting Dilly Parsons’ stringy brown hair into pigtails when he walked into the ward. Dilly was a new patient, eight years old and very sad indeed, with a forlorn little upturned nose and large dark eyes, red now with weeping. Joan’s hands were gentle, coaxing the unruly strands of hair into neatness, and her voice was gentle telling Dilly that she was a big, brave girl, and that big, brave girls never cried for long in this nice ward with its lovely flowers and gallant rocking horse.

With a stifled sniff Dilly looked round to find the attractions mentioned. “Are children allowed to ride the horse?” she asked suspiciously, with a swallowed sob. Joan said of course they were, as soon as they were able to get up, and went on to assure Dilly that the doll’s house at the end of the room had a real kitchen and bathroom in it, real stairs, a mother and father doll, and four children.

It was at this point that Garth came in. Dilly was, it appeared, to be his patient.

When he saw Joan the muscles of his face tightened, but his smile for her was heartbreakingly casual.

“Liking it with the kids?” he asked her, seating himself on Dilly’s bed.

“I’m liking it immensely,” Joan told him quietly, and wondered at the hard, quick beating of her heart. Her slim little body felt quite shaken by it—a monstrous, sledge hammer of a heart under her tightly-drawn, neat white apron. She was pale to the slip suddenly and her fingers shook tying the final tape on Dilly’s lanky braids.

Garth cruelly watched the receding color, noted the wide blue anguished eyes and the trembling hands, his glance coldly appraising. Then he turned to Dilly, who shrank back into her pillows and demanded in her belligerent little Cockney voice, “Wot yer goin’ to do ter me?”

His grey eyes twinkled reassuringly. “Mind if I listen to your heart through my little telephone?” he asked, holding out a stethoscope for inspection. Dilly eyed the instrument a moment, then gingerly submitted a small bony little chest for inspection.

For a few silent moments Garth busied himself with his examination, Joan helping him with a quiet efficiency, folding back bedclothes, holding Dilly’s frightened hand, whisking the diminutive nightgown out of the way.

She was thinking, watching his tenderness with this small patient: Garth is quite unusually lovely with children—all children. Even when they are sick and unattractive like Dilly he adores them. He’s made that way. I was right about wanting him to go back to Ivan. I know I was right.

“I’ve a pain in my tummy,” the child moaned, her face going pinched and grey under the young surgeon’s gently probing fingers.

“I know, baby,” he soothed. “It’s just that very pain I’m chasing. Hold still, like a good girl! Just one more minute of this—There!” He straightened up and turned to the chart at the head of the bed; The red line of Dilly’s temperature went high, the pulse rate in Joan’s neat figures said 128.

When Garth moved from the bedside Joan moved also, walking decorously behind him. That was what hospital etiquette demanded of her. She heard him murmur into the air, “Not much time to lose with that child!—marked inflammation of the peritoneum. Sister on duty, Nurse?”

“I’ll fetch her, sir,” Joan said meekly, official now as himself. She was very much Nurse Langden whisking along the corridor in her starched skirts, her head held high, two bright spots of color on her cheeks. A month ago Garth would have smiled at that professional “sir”, she was thinking. But he hadn’t smiled today. Just looked at her coldly, calmly, as though she were any humble probationer who couldn’t be trusted with the details of his Dilly diagnosis, nor given the swift instructions for the ante-operative treatment which must be commenced at once.

Sister was seated in her neat flower-filled office copying out case histories, Sister Perry, who was young and fresh and charming and so mighty a relief after the grim Millet that Joan adored her. She smiled now, hearing that Mr. Perros wanted her and laid her pen and papers aside.

“I didn’t know he came down to this block,” Joan was saying stupidly, impulsively. “I thought—”

“Oh, he often takes our more interesting cases,” Sister Perry said, coolly explanatory, her eyes a little pitying for Joan’s distress. “Is he one of your pet aversions among the surgeons?” she asked, without much interest. “He’s a sharp-spoken young man when he’s put out.”

“He was about on Dale a good deal,” Joan murmured, thanking her stars that Sister Perry didn’t know anything of her personal friendship with this important honorary, that she could have no suspicion for the real reason of the new probationer’s distress at having been left alone with the great Garth Perros for a bedside examination.

“You ought to have called me the moment he arrived. You ought not to have tried to attend to him. It’s hardly your job.” Sister was chiding gently, floating away now in her tight-fitting navy blue frock and smart spotted muslin cap.

Joan swallowed the rebuke and went off to the humble task of scrubbing out lockers, which was her rightful occupation that foggy November afternoon. In the long medical ward with its neat, too quiet little cots she knelt soberly before a score of lockers in turn, swabbing them with scalding, soda-strong water, wiping them dry, spraying them with disinfectant. It was a cruel surprise to her that her escape from Dale Ward hadn’t after all been an escape from Garth. She had been so sure that he did not visit Merlin House, as the children’s block was known. But now he would be in the place every day for at least a fortnight, watching Dilly Parsons—and after that perhaps other cases. All the interesting ones, Sister Perry had said. It was like Garth to pick and choose from the welter of patients in St. Angela’s with their welter of ills. And if Mr. Garth Perros chose you you were one of the lucky ones. The Perros’ cases progressed better than anyone else’s. Often they got better miraculously, when by all the laws of nature they ought to have died. That was because Garth Perros had genius in his brain and in his hands. He was the most dramatically successful surgeon the hospital had ever known.

All this went through Joan’s mind painfully as she toiled with the lockers. She thought to herself also that if Garth had let Vera divorce him, most probably not all the brilliance in the world would have saved his career at St. Angela’s. Then, for the hundredth time, she wondered what she would feel like if, in spite of her efforts, Garth went ahead with his divorce plan after all. Ever since she had got back from Dipley she had been wondering that, trying to stifle the mad little burst of hope that came with it. Maybe, she would tell herself, Vera and Garth disliked one another so thoroughly that they would not be able to face living together even for Ivan’s sake.

And if so—what next? Would Garth come back to her?

With a painful intensity she longed that afternoon to discover what Garth and Vera had made up their minds to do. Not knowing gave her a sick kind of uncertainty which made her feel positively ill. Going along the corridor for a fresh supply of hot water she tried to pull herself together. This, she told herself was a ridiculous way to be. When she left Dipley last week she had persuaded herself that she was really and truly done with the Garth business, and that she must begin life all over again just as though she had never known him, never loved him. For a little while she had felt dead inside and finished and ... well, quite definite. Now this insidious uncertainty about Garth and Vera was robbing her of all her peace again, making her come to life, making her
hope.
And she didn’t want to hope. It was too painful.

Besides, this feverish mood would affect her work sooner or later, and that would be a nuisance. She liked this new work too well to want to bungle it. In brief moments of self-forgetfulness she would find herself utterly enthralled by it. She liked Sister Perry. She liked her fellow-nurses at Merlin. The wards were delightful with their cream-washed, stencilled walls, their fairy-tale murals and dadoes. The cots were pink enamel with pale blue covers, the fireplaces had bright brass guards and Mickey Mouse tiles. There were flowers everywhere and big potted plants hung with scarlet winter berries. And there were literally hundreds of toys. It was one of Joan’s jobs to collect them at night and put them away in the spacious cupboard beside the fireplaces. And even then Sister Perry was lovely about it and didn’t insist upon them
all
being put away. If some small sick girl wanted to keep a precious doll to hug throughout the long night she was allowed to do so. The boys tucked racing motor cars under their pillows, and half-built Meccano outfits or trays of jig-saw puzzles were never ruthlessly taken to pieces for the sake of hospital tidiness. They were put carefully into one of the waiting rooms on the ground floor instead so that their owners could go on the next day with the interrupted task.

It was a beautiful atmosphere at Merlin House—peaceful, orderly and with a gentle homeliness you aid not usually find in hospital. That was because Sister Perry loved children and understood them perfectly.

But now Garth Perros had threatened all the peace as far as Joan was concerned. When back at her locker-washing she caught sight of his broad shoulders and dark, unruly hair passing the door of the medical ward she wanted to crawl under the nearest bed and hide. He was on his way to the theatre probably, she reflected, and by this time poor little Dilly would be having her Nembutal or whatever it was they were going to give her to put her to sleep.

Sister Perry was the next person to appear in the frame of the doorway, pausing to speak to Joan.

She said, “Nurse Langden, will you run along to my room, please, and ’phone Mr. Perros’ home. You’ll find the number on my pad—Welbeck something
. Tell
them at his house that he’ll be delayed at the hospital this evening, and will not be home for dinner.”

“Yes, Sister,” gasped Joan, and scrambled to her feet to carry out this order.

In Sister’s office she clutched the ’phone in damp, red, soda-burned fingers. There was no need for her to bother looking at the pad. She knew Garth’s number by heart. He had given it to her ... that night at the Berkeley. He had said, “You’ve got to ring me up any time, Joanna, just any time, day or night, that you feel like it. I’ll always be glad.”

She dialled now, and waited. “Is that Mr. Perros’ flat?” she asked. And when the golden, husky voice with its slightly foreign intonation said, “Yess—this is Meester Per-ros’,” Joan caught her breath. Somehow she gave her message, listened to the voice saying, “Thank you,” and hung up. Her eyes were wide and afraid now staring at the little instrument on the table. It was Vera’s voice that had come to her across the wire ... Vera in Garth’s flat! Vera taking messages about his not being back for dinner as though it were the most natural thing in the world for her to do. What could that mean? That she was visiting Garth’s home this afternoon ... that she was
living
there? Joan pushed the suspicion from her in a frenzy of distaste. It couldn’t possibly mean
that,
she told herself. Not yet. Not so soon. They couldn’t be living together just calmly this way without Garth having told her about it ... Though why he should bother to tell her about it, she reflected bleakly a moment later, she did not know. In any case she had given him no opportunity for conversation with her this week. She hadn’t phoned when she got back from Dipley on Tuesday al
t
hough she had had every excuse to do so. Mrs. Perros had given her a message for Garth about some books he had left behind. But she hadn’t the courage to speak to him even about books. It had, she found, been utterly impossible to perform that simple action.

For the rest of her time on duty Joan puzzled over the matter of Vera’s voice in Garth’s flat. She was quite limp with frustrated curiosity, by the time she crossed the lamp-lit evening square to the Nurses’ Home. Greta, the parlourmaid, told her there was a visitor waiting to see her in the nurses’ reception-room and she flushed with sudden childish pleasure that was more than half sheer relief at having something fresh to think about. Nobody ever called on her at St. Angela’s, and running down the corridor to the reception-room, she wondered excitedly who it could possibly be.

It was Barney O’Crea, impudent and handsome and debonair in white tie and tails, his freckled, face shining with soap and water, his tawny hair brushed ruthlessly slick.

“Could you wring a midnight pass from the nuns who run this establishment, do ye think?” he asked with a grin, his fingers holding her own in a warm, friendly grip.

“Barney O’Crea!” Joan murmured in horror. “Walking in on me like this! You’ll get me shot at dawn. Don’t you know casual young men visitors are most sternly discouraged in nurses homes? If Donald Duck sees you she’ll have a fit.”

Barney’s grin only widened. “You could tell her I’m your long-lost Irish brother,” he suggested. “But listen, Joan, really! Can’t you manage to make a getaway? I’ve a couple of tickets here for the opening of the new restaurant at the Carchester tonight. It’s going to be a gorgeous affair—food for the gods and a cabaret thrown in. All the cream of society will be there—if you want to feast your eyes on them. Can’t you possibly make it?”

Joan looked thoughtful. “I’ll see what I can do.” she promised, and went away to find the Home Sister. As it happened that stern personage was out for the evening, and the meek little staff nurse who was deputizing for her rather nervously gave Joan one of the eleven-thirty passes and told her she must be satisfied with that. Joan was more than satisfied. An unexpected party with Barney was just what she needed to lift her out of the wretched mood she was in. Barney tonight was a godsend if he only knew.

She was radiant a little later driving away with that cheerful young man in a taxi cab, her sapphire-blue evening cloak drawn close about her bare white shoulders. Her spirits had rocketed out of their depression in a feverish unreal kind of way so that she was altogether too gay, too elated suddenly. She knew it, but there wasn’t anything she could do about it. Her moods went like that these unstable days. And even this wild hilarity wasn’t happiness. But it was something to be thankful for all the same.