Nurse Abroad(21)

“Listen, Sarah, maybe this Christmas hasn’t been easy for any of us. I’ve missed Duncan horribly today. He was more like on older brother than an uncle, you know, and all the family I had left. I was glad of the children in the house.

“Perhaps this partnership isn’t such a bad thing after all, and perhaps—” He broke off, his look enigmatical.



Sarah twisted a little in his hold to look up at him.

She said, “I’m sorry ... Perhaps I’ve been so wrapped up in my own affairs, my own loss, though more for the children’s sakes than my own, that I’d not realized what a blow it must have been to you too. But thank you for giving the children such a wonderful Christmas.”

His eyebrows went up. “Only the children?”

Sarah felt her cheeks glow, but she managed to maintain her steady, sincere look. “For the wonderful day you’ve given us,” she said, and, because suddenly she couldn’t go on holding his look without tenderness creeping into her own, she stood up, pulling the hood back over her head. “We must go, or else Mrs. Mac will wonder where on earth we are.”

He took her arm as they walked across the roughly metalled track to the homestead. Somewhere a little owl hooted as it went a-hunting in the hedge, a hedgehog scuttled down their path, a sheep coughed, the wind in the trees rustled the leaves ... all the lovely sounds of the country night, as they walked silently, came into the house, turned the key, mounted the stairs.

There was no light on in the upstairs landing, but the starlight shone faintly through the leaded casement at the far end. They stopped at Sarah’s door. Grant’s room was past Mrs. Mac’s. He kept hold of her elbow, turned her to face him, slipped his other hand between her shoulders.

“Don’t lie awake your first Christmas in New Zealand, Sarah, thinking of ‘old, unhappy far-off things.’ ”



She looked up at him. “I’ll try not to, Grant, but—well, sometimes it’s hard to discipline oneself that way ... I so often dream of what’s last in my mind before going to bed.”



“Do you?” His lips twitched again, the dark hazel eyes lit with sheer mischief. “In that case, I’d better give you something else to think about—”

His hand came up to pull the hood back, and returned to press her to him. He bent his head, kissed her. Kissed her very thoroughly.

Sarah was so taken by surprise she made no effort to free herself, an effort that would have been of no avail in any case, because his grip was like iron.

Grant Alexander lifted his mouth from hers, laughed a strange short laugh, and released her. Sarah’s hand found the knob of the door, turned it. She was inside her room on the instant, closed the door, leaned against it, her knees trembling.

Before she got into bed she stood looking at her reflection in the mirror.

“Sarah Isbister! Don’t read anything into that—however much you long to. He was sorry for you—that’s all. I can’t help loving him, but I do. I do. I must be mad. Yet no one else has ever so stirred my imagination, my pulses ... I’d have liked to have had a fair-and-square chance of meeting him on an even footing ... of starting off without resentment and suspicion between us ... Oh, Grant...!”

Sarah snapped off the light, buried her face in the pillow. There didn’t seem to be any way out. You couldn’t wipe out the circumstances of her coming to New Zealand. That would be always between them. Better to give in sometimes like this ... to weep when alone, then try to sleep ... “sleep that knits up the raveled sleave of care” as Shakespeare wrote. Come morning she would find fresh courage.

She did. The next few days were very pleasant, apart from the ache at Sarah’s heart. It was difficult, though, in the face of Pauline’s and Rory’s sheer enjoyment of the holidays and life in general at Challowsford, not to do so. Besides, Sarah had to admit Grant gave them a good time.



There was no mail for about four days, as the holiday break came at the weekend. That meant no paper either, as the rural mail van delivered that too.

“It’s like living on a desert island,” grumbled Grant, who, man-like, found life unendurable without a newspaper.

“I don’t know,” said Sarah. “It has compensations. We’ve been too busy enjoying ourselves to have even the radio on, and it’s such a rest not to be worried about nuclear warfare and frontiers, and Governments being overthrown. It’s like a break is hostilities, a happy leave-time.”

“Poor Sarah,” he laughed, flicking her cheek. “World situation getting you down? It does, sometimes. Other times we just ... bash on with the job in hand.”

Sarah hadn’t realized this had been just a break in their own hostilities, that when the mail came it would start all over again.

Grant brought the mail in. Sarah did not notice that he looked rather grim. He’d been so friendly these last few days, she had no apprehension, wasn’t looking for a return of suspicion and doubt. She was happily aware that given time, things might now work out. Months of harmonious working in the delightful atmosphere of Challowsford would overlay the bad beginning. It was the first time she had allowed herself to believe this.

“Didn’t you get any mail, Grant?” she asked. “Mine seems to be all English.”

“Yes, I’ve read mine.”

Sarah was too absorbed in ripping open a letter from a girl she had nursed with to notice how terse was his tone.

He lingered about, his eyes on another letter unopened. At last Sarah picked it up. She sat down on the kitchen table to read it.

She uttered a sound of dismay. Grant looked up. “What’s the matter? Bad news?”

“Yes ... at least, not really ... not what we would call bad news ... but someone over there is coming to Australia and wants to pay me a visit, flying over for a spell.”

Grant lifted an eyebrow. “Not a friend, I take it?”

Sarah hesitated. “Well—I knew her well enough ... too well, perhaps. She had a flat in the same building as mine, but—”

His tone was cynical. “But living too near can mean knowing too much about one.”

Sarah thought he had expressed that rather well. Elaine Thomason hadn’t been the sort to improve with deeper acquaintance. She had no idea Grant felt that probably Elaine knew too much for Sarah’s comfort of mind.

Grant went on: “Why didn’t you like her?”

Again Sarah hesitated. How explain that despite all Elaine’s sweetness, she distrusted her? That she was a woman without friends of her own sex. One who had a cruel knack of belittling other people, a genius for making ambiguous remarks, for making one appear foolish.

How explain, without sounding petty and jealous, that Elaine had made a definite set to get Duncan Alexander, who had seen through her? Elaine’s chagrin at her failure had been ugly, venomous. Even from this distance Sarah could recall the smiling taunts Elaine had made when she had known Duncan had left his share of the estate to Sarah.

So Sarah shrugged, said lightly, “Oh, just the usual ‘I do not like thee, Doctor Fell, the reason why I cannot tell.”

“Well, I suppose that’s a sufficient reason for one woman to dislike another,” said Grant, the old derisive note back in his voice. Sarah looked up in surprise.

He said, a keen look in his eye, “I thought nurses usually lived on hospital premises?”

“Yes, but I took the flat after—after—well, after a while.”

“I see. You could afford it then, of course, even if you did try to make me believe you didn’t draw on the estate at all.”

Sarah couldn’t believe he’d said it, that they were back where they had started. Oh, hadn’t she been living in a fool’s paradise!

“Grant, I—”

“Sarah, don’t add to your deceitfulness by trying to explain it away. When I knew you’d immediately moved to a service flat I ought to have known what it meant. Yet I’ve been deceiving myself, this last little while, that perhaps after all... oh, what’s the use?”

Sarah made a despairing gesture with her hands. “Grant... please, let me—”

But he had turned away. “No, don’t perjure yourself further. Don’t disillusion me any more.” And he was gone.

Sarah stood, too hurt for tears. She could scarcely believe he’d said the bitter words.

Recollection came flooding back on her. He had said he had known about her moving to a service flat. How? Could it be possible that Grant Alexander, on hearing his uncle had left his possessions to a stranger, had employed a private detective agency to spy upon her?

Sarah gathered up her letters, moved away. She would have to answer Elaine’s letter right away. Elaine would be leaving soon.

She worked for a wool-buyer, who had been in Australia for the wool sales there, and who had a daughter married to a wealthy Australian grazier. He was spending the Christmas and New Year holidays over there, and sight-seeing throughout January, after which Elaine was to join him to help fix up all his business concerns.

After that, for a few weeks, her time would be her own, and, as she said, since she might never be as near again, she would like to fly across the Tasman and see as much of New Zealand as possible.

On the face of it, it was quite reasonable. Sarah told herself she was foolish to dread her coming. What mischief could Elaine possibly make here? After all, it didn’t need a third person to create a situation here, it was already created, and she had been foolish ever to think it could be surmounted.