Nurse Abroad(17)
That night he did not come into the kitchen when the work after tea was done. The shearers had gone, since everything had gone like clockwork, and the day had been perfect, still after yesterday’s nor’wester, and not too hot.
Grant merely came in, got some tobacco, and went out again. He paused at the kitchen door, looked back at her.
“Thank you for the meals today,” he said punctiliously.
Sarah looked up from replacing the cutlery in the table drawer.
“Oh, don’t thank me. After all, it’s in my interests too, isn’t it? My monetary interests, that is ... that the shearers should be well fed and satisfied? So that they are eager to come back next year.”
He slowly filled his pipe, shrugged.
“Something in that. You think you’ll be here next year, then?”
His eyes challenged her. Sarah drew in her breath. He meant—he meant he would do all in his power to force her out.
She said, as levelly as she could manage: “I expect to be. I’m not easily turned from my purpose, or intimidated. Not unless, of course, I find that even owing half a property like this is too big a price to pay for the proximity of a man I dislike so much.”
He didn’t as much as flicker an eyelid. He merely said, as evenly as she had, “One thing I do admire about you, Miss Isbister, is your devastating candor. Goodnight.”
On the Saturday they went in to Christchurch to visit Mrs. Mac. Grant Alexander said crisply, “I would like you to come, Miss Isbister, and for her peace of mind to behave as if we were—as if we did not detest each other.”
If Sarah flinched from that, she did not show it. She had said worse to him, she admitted to herself ... only, with what one said oneself, one knew it was not meant. When somebody else said things like that, one did not know if it was merely retaliation, or if there was real feeling behind it.
She said quietly, “Put like that, it sounds like a Royal Command, doesn’t it?”
“If you like.” His voice showed his complete disregard of her resentment.
Sarah moistened her lips. “Then I suppose I’m entitled to ask the same favor. I don’t wish our enmity—our increased enmity—apparent to the children. They have—hitherto—been reared in an atmosphere of love. If we’re forever bickering in front of them it will destroy their sense of security, and they are just beginning to win it back after losing Mother and Father.”
He said, lips tight, “Have I ever quarrelled with you in front of the children?”
“No, to give you your due, you haven’t. You have been kind and patient with them, but children so soon sense undercurrents.”
“Then it’s up to you. I’m prepared to be civil to you. And I have no quarrel with the children, in fact, I’m sorry for them. I feel they’ve been forced into a false position by an acquisitive sister.”
Sarah spread her hands out in a helpless gesture. “Without me they would have had no one of their own. Did I have any right to refuse what was offered on their behalf? Besides ... this came into it too ... if you’d been there and seen the agony of mind your uncle went through when he realized that through him the children were orphaned, you’d know that my taking his offer ... at last ... did ease his mind before he died.”
In her despair at never being able to make him understand, Sarah struck her hands together in a telling attitude. She was standing against the early morning sunlight, her forget-me-not blue linen frock patterned in black, with a background or rosy hawthorn blossom behind her, the sun gilding her hair till it looked like spun gold, her eyes Norse blue ...
“Oh, spare me the attitudes,” said Grant, turning his head away. “I’ve no use for heroics or sob-stuff. You played your cards well. How any woman could be so unfair as to blame the driver of a car whose brakes were proved to be faulty is beyond me. How can you work that one out?”
Sarah looked past him for one long, unseeing moment. The temptation to tell him was almost too much for her. To tell him that Duncan had been warned in Edinburgh that his brakes needed attention, but had decided he couldn’t spare the time, that he’d exercise care and get them fixed when they reached London ... The moment of temptation passed. It was criminal carelessness, that. She couldn’t blacken Duncan’s memory to that extent. Sarah turned away, went into the cottage, calling Pauline and Rory, keeping her voice steady.
How can I care for him, she asked herself, how can I? But I do, I do ... The turn of his head, the angle of his jaw, his hazel eyes that have only once been tender and kind for me ... the night the twins were born, and I spurned his overture because of my stupid pride. Yes, I care—and he despises me, he always will.
Pauline and Rory came running. Quickly Sarah changed into an oatmeal suit, knotted a blue scarf beneath the collar, donned a small blue hat, insisted that Rory scrubbed his knees, and said no, certainly Pauline couldn’t go to see Mrs. Mac in shorts and sandals.
They came out to the car where her partner waited. She said briskly, “I’ll sit in the back. You two children get in front with Mr. Alexander.” She got in quickly and shut the door. In the driving mirror her eyes met Grant’s defiantly.
They had midday dinner at the same roadside tea-room where they had dined before. The children loved it. As far as Sarah was concerned she might just as well have been, eating flap of mutton and bread and butter pudding as braised chicken and peche Melba.
“What will we do while you’re in the hospital?” asked Rory. “Grant says children aren’t allowed in as visitors just now because of the measles.”
Grant answered for Sarah. “You can go into the museum. It’s a wonderful one, in a delightful setting. It’s much too big to do much of it. Why not go to the New Zealand Native Bird section? Bring your knowledge up to date. Some time when we aren’t so busy, I’ll bring you in for the day. We’ll have lunch in the Gardens and spend most of the time in the museum. But for today, you can spend about three-quarters of an hour and come back to the car. I’ll give you a spare key, Rory.”
They dropped the children in Rolleston Avenue and went on over the river to the hospital. They found Mrs. Mac much better and already chafing against enforced idleness. The sister wanted a word with them. They went to her sittingroom.
“She could go home now, though she’ll need assistance for long enough getting dressed and so on. Is there anyone who could look after her?”
Before Sarah could speak, Grant said, “My partner here could. She’s a trained sister herself. Would you be prepared to do that, Miss Isbister? It would mean moving over to the big house, of course. Mrs. Mac may even need you through the night.”
The sister turned away to answer the telephone. Sarah said, in a low, intense voice, “I’d be most happy to do that for Mrs. Mac ... if you can stand having me in the house!”
The sister was too busy on the phone to hear what they said.
Grant had a curl to his lip. “It would suit me very well.”
“And that, I suppose, is all that matters.”
“Yes. Any reason why I shouldn’t turn the situation to my own advantage? After all, it’s been a costly gesture on my uncle’s part, for me. Besides, it’s only taking a leaf out of your own book.”
Sarah bit her lip. The sister replaced the phone, turned to them.
Grant said smoothly, “My partner is delighted to help, so perhaps we can take my housekeeper back right away.”
Mrs. Mac was pleased to be coming, and Sarah knew relief that she would be home again. She would act as a buffer. There would not be so many sessions alone with Grant, then, when she found herself being bitter, or in danger of betraying herself.
Sarah found herself loving Challowsford, as one almost always came to care for a house one must tend, and Mrs. Mac could manage very little yet.
The housekeeper said one day, “This has been a rare treat for me, lass. First time I’ve been able to be laid aside in comfort since I took over here. Nice to have another woman at the helm, specially a deft one like yourself, brought up in the old tradition.
“I was aghast when I heard we’d had a girl and two bairns wished on to us ... thought you’d be one of the useless sort, wanting waiting on, never dreaming you’d be able to cope with anything, from bread-baking to scrubbing my floor. Aye, and enjoy doing it too. And here you are, just like the daughter I never had.”
Sarah scattered flour on the baking-board preparatory to rolling out the scones. She was conscious of a warmth at her heart, but she started as a voice spoke from the doorway ... Grant’s.
“She disarms you, doesn’t she, Mrs. Mac?”
Sarah ignored it.
Challowsford was built in the old Colonial style, wooden, tin-roofed, with a long front verandah, and dormer-windows above, but it had been delightfully modernized, everything done in keeping with the period, yet making housekeeping easier.
A year or two ago the partners had had it rough-cast over the timber, and painted dazzling white with Cotswold green sills and roof.
Sarah gleaned a lot of bits of early history from Mrs. Mac. Duncan’s wife, who had died at forty-five, had loved the house and preserved the best of the pioneer furnishings: the old fashioned Scots kists-o’s-drawers, with their round smooth wooden handles, the heavy mahogany tables, the spinningwheel Duncan’s grandmother had brought out with her, the everlasting rag rugs worked with thistles and roses, the mirrorstands on the dressing-tables, the walnut bedroom suite.