Nurse Abroad(31)

Today had convinced Sarah as never before that she was no match for Elaine, and that if Grant championed any cause it would be Elaine’s. Cause? What had put that word into her mind? Did Elaine have a cause? Sarah’s mind immediately supplied the answer. Oh, yes, Elaine’s cause was always the furthering of Elaine’s own interests...

It was with a heavy heart that Sarah came back to the homestead.

As they came through the back gate they noticed a cage on the grass.

Grant bent over it curiously. “Oh, a casualty.” They all looked. It was a hedgehog, rather gory about the snout. It was panting a little, but had evidently recovered enough to drink some bread and milk out of a saucer.

“I get it,” said Grant. “Pauline has been doing a spot of rescue work.”

Elaine shuddered delicately. “Aren’t they revolting? Especially that one—it would be much better if it was destroyed, and the sooner the better.”

“Oh, no.” Grant was most emphatic. “Lots of folk destroy animals who could be saved—either to save themselves bother, or because they don’t like having their pity stirred, and say they’ll put it out of its misery. Sentiment gone haywire, I think.”

For once Elaine missed her cue. “But in the case of vermin, why bother? I mean the wretched things are no earthly use—they have to be destroyed, don’t they? They’re just pests.”

Sarah thought of the times she had seen Grant fishing hedgehogs carefully out of the pit beneath the cattle-stops, reviving them with bread and milk, bestowing them safely under a friendly hedge.

“Indeed they’re not,” said Grant, and Sarah noticed with inward satisfaction that the tone Grant usually employed towards Elaine was definitely missing. “Why, they are of great benefit to us, they help us to keep down the grass grubs. They just about live on what we call night-bees ... those hard-backed brown flying beetles that are one stage of the grass grub life cycle.”

“Aren’t you clever, Grant, knowing about things like that.” Elaine wrinkled her brow. “But how would you know?”

“Oh, Sarah and I were interested. It justified our defence of hedgehogs, you see ... and we were lucky enough to find a hedgehog’s vomit once and proved our case.”

Elaine gave a disgusted shriek. “Grant, how can you! I’m squeamish. I can’t bear thinking about such things. It’s different for Sarah, she’s used to them.”

“Yes,” agreed Sarah equably. “Hospital life is mainly little bowls and bed-pans.”

Elaine spread her hands out in a deprecating gesture.

“Darling, don’t, don’t. Too, too crude. How can you? I’m afraid I’m ... well ... more sensitive. I shudder at the thought.”

She smiled up at Grant, emphasizing her daintiness, her fragile femininity.

“Yes,” he said slowly, “I can’t quite see you delivering twins single-handed.”

Above Elaine’s head his eyes met Sarah’s squarely. The door opened and Pauline rushed out. Pauline had blood on her linen pinafore frock, but that wasn’t what they gazed at. It was at her face. It was quite lopsided, and one eye was a rich purple.

“Ye gods!” said Grant. “What a shiner! Where in the world did you get that?”

He and Sarah both knew before she answered: “Rescuing the hedgehog.”

“From what?” asked Grant.

“From some boys. They were using it as a target for throwing stones. They wouldn’t stop when I asked them to.”

Grant added for her, “So you pitched in, boots and all?”

Sarah realized how little Elaine understood Grant, his immense compassion for animals who were hurt or misused, when she said:

“That child needs taking in hand, Sarah. She’ll grow into a horror. Fisticuffs! What would your mother have said?”

Sarah’s eye’s danced. “She’d have been with Pauline all the way. She once had a tooth knocked out herself rescuing a kitten from some hooligans.”

“Good for her,” said Grant. “Much better to have a gap than the uncomfortable remembrance of having gone by on the other side. Come on, Pauline, we’ll get a bit of steak out of the fridge to put on that eye.”

Only Sarah caught the malicious gleam in Elaine’s eye as Grant shepherded Pauline ahead of him into the house. Elaine couldn’t take a setback like that.

After tea Elaine said to Sarah confidentially, “By the way, Sarah ... you seem impervious to hints ... Grant is hoping to have me to himself tonight. Time is so scarce, he feels. So, since you seem to need plain speaking, I thought I’d tell you he’s hoping you’ll take the children over home and give us a chance.”

Grant had said, “Any plans for tonight, Sarah?” Sarah’s face burned now. She said quietly, “Thank you for telling me. I did try to get out of coming today, but Grant made a point of it.”

Elaine shrugged. “Oh, you know how it is with Grant, he can’t bear to hurt a fly, but you do try him, you know, Sarah.”

Sarah said, “Then he shouldn’t be so hypocritical. I could have done with the day at home. He made me feel I’d be churlish to refuse.

Elaine said smoothly, “Well, now that you know it really is, you’ll be tactful, won’t you?”



Sarah turned away, called Pauline and Rory, said goodnight in the kitchen to Mrs. Mac and went over to the cottage.





CHAPTER TEN



She felt depressed for some days. She told herself it was the weather, sultry, with clouds scattering and massing over the hills. The colors of the landscape were so bright they hurt the eyes. Brassy skies, burning gold of ripened wheat and oats, sun-scorched paddocks, flaming gorse and broom, tussocky hills so yellow one longed for the green pastures of fair England. Hills and plains alike shimmered in a succession of heat-waves, and the thermometer soared into the nineties ...



All day it had been oppressive, still, with clouds gathering in the south-west. Sarah was assailed by sudden homesickness, a longing for the salt-laden cold winds of Orkney ... for mist and rain, gentle against one’s face, for gulls crying, and spindrift and the feel of brine on one’s lips.

It wasn’t till after sunset that the storm broke. Sarah still felt restless.

She said to the children, “Mind if I go out for a walk in the rain? It’s been so stuffy today. I’ll not be long. When you’ve done your homework, go to bed to read. I’ll give you your supper when I get back.”

She’d not been gone more than ten minutes when there was a tap at the door and Grant walked in. He’d brought over a chicken, neatly trussed.

“Where’s your sister?” he asked from the doorway, water streaming from his macintosh.

They spoke as one. “Out for a walk.”

Grant’s amazement made them laugh. “For a walk? On a night like this?”

Rory grinned. “You don’t know Sarah very well, Grant. We lived on Orkney, remember. Wind and rain and mist most of the time. When it was like this, and we knew the fishing fleet would be putting back, Dad and Sarah always went to watch for them, if she was home.

“They were Dad’s parishioners, you see. When they saw the boats they always went down to the quay. Dad would have gone down when they put out, you know. To give them his blessing, to wish them godspeed and a safe return. So he had to be there when they came home. Unless he’d gone with them, of course.”

Grant looked at Rory’s attractively freckled face under the thick thatch of tawny hair. What had the boy said? ... You don’t know Sarah very well. How true was it? He had imagined her very clearly on a luxury liner, at the Captain’s table, or starched and efficient in a London hospital, being all in all to wealthy patients ... It didn’t quite tie up with a tomboyish lass on windswept crags, hobnobbing with fisherfolk, the minister’s daughter, sharing in his care, of his flock, helping him in his pastoral duties. That was a Sarah he didn’t know.

He gave Pauline the fowl, neatly wrapped in polythene.

“Put it in the fridge. I’ll see if I can find Sarah. I like walking in the rain too. That’s why I came out ... the atmosphere in the house was suddenly too confining. Any idea where she would go?”

“Up to Windy Crag, I suppose. You can see the sea from there in the daylight.”

“Windy Crag? Where do you mean?”

“Up back. That great outcrop of rock. Right above the poplars, past the old sod hut. There was a Windy Crag at home, that’s why Sarah called it that.”

Grant turned into the night, marvelling that any woman would venture out in it. Not Elaine; she was too dainty, a Dresden shepherdess. He thought of Elaine as he’d left her, deep in an armchair, dressed in glowing carnation velvet, low-cut, revealing, womanly.

The wind buffeted him as he climbed, but there was something exhilarating in it. Despite the constant rain the night was far from black; a fitful moon peered out now and then from behind the clouds. The ground was slippery, treacherous.

He could see Sarah now, braced against the elements, looking out towards the sea that wasn’t visible, her face uplifted a little: She ought to have looked ludicrous. She was wearing a stiff oil slicker of his own that he’d given her to wear back to the cottage one rare wet day, and she had a sou-wester of Rory’s pulled over her hair, and Rory’s boots on.