Nurse Abroad(9)
Sarah suddenly knew that was too general to be honest ... the folk around here, and in Cheviot, were quite kindly to her, thanks perhaps to the way Mrs. Mac had sponsored her at the Women’s Institute and the church meetings. Sarah knew she ought to be honest with herself. It was Grant Alexander’s respect she wanted.
But on a day like this, with the lambs on the hillsides so dazzlingly white they looked like an advertisement for some super soap-powder, and clouds like white candy floss spun over the blue, it was hard to be unhappy. Sarah smiled to herself again.
She wasn’t to know Grant Alexander had been watching her for some moments, or that he thought as he watched that it reminded him of something read somewhere long ago ... “I like a woman who smiles at her own thoughts.” Perhaps he resented that thought coming to him, perhaps that was what made him say with a sarcastic inflection in his voice, “You certainly have the knack of picking the right backgrounds for yourself, haven’t you, Miss Isbister?”
In a flash the magic of the morning had fled for Sarah. Her nerves tightened, her mind became taut, wary.
She said with a shrug, “You startled me. I was enjoying the sunshine and the view ...” she gestured towards it... “where every prospect pleases and only...” Her eyes challenged him.
He rose to it, finished the quotation for her: “... and only man is vile!” He added, his eyes holding hers, “You needn’t have spared me the other half.”
“I’d no intention of sparing you,” rejoined Sarah crisply. “It’s so evident what you want to believe of me.”
“For instance what?” His tone was hard.
“That I deliberately drape myself in front of matching backgrounds ... that to the captain of the liner that brought me here I was a Viking figurehead ... to your uncle an angel of mercy, desperately in need of money, and that this morning, in the hope that you might arrive, and that I might appeal to your aesthetic tastes, I garb myself in lilac to match the lilac bushes ... oh, pah!” She made an impatient gesture towards one of the far flower-beds. “That’s what I was doing ... weeding! Very prosaic.”
She turned to go. He caught her arm.
“Tell me, just for academic interest, why I want to believe this?”
“So that you can justify your resentment of me ... as the partner thrust upon you.”
She suddenly realized she was acutely aware of his hand on her bare forearm, and that it wasn’t unpleasant, so she added hotly, “And please take your hand off me. I dislike being pawed.”
He removed it instantly. Stood looking after her, as she went into the house, and shut the door.
CHAPTER FOUR
Time for shearing drew near, and it looked as if the weather was going to be perfect. Mrs. Mac was filling all the cake tins against the morning teas and afternoon teas that she would provide.
“It’s not that I find other cooking too tiring,” she confessed to Sarah, “but it irks me sore when the weather breaks and you’ve got the meat all ready and the potatoes and vegies done the night before, and it pours. Half the food gets wasted, and you’re really weary and not wanting to start doing it all over again. Last year we were in a fine to-do. Showers every day, shearers bad-tempered, some cleared off and went farther north where the weather was hotter. It went on nearly to Christmas, I was nigh demented.”
“Let’s hope for better luck with the weather this year,” said Sarah, “and do let me pull my weight with the meals and washing up. I thought I might have become a land-girl by now and helped with the outside work, but Mr. Alexander just won’t let me.”
The housekeeper laughed. “Och, he’s a thrawn de’il that one. When he gets a bee in his bonnet, he’s reluctant to let it go. But it’ll no last ... not wi’ a lass like yourself.”
Sarah said stiffly, “Oh, I’ve no desire to worm myself in, Mrs. Mac, where I’m not wanted. I’ll stand aloof. It’s just that we live well, and I’d like to feel I earned it.”
Mrs. Mac laughed softly. “Och, don’t fash yourself. Men are just loth to admit their airly judgments are wrong. You bide your time.”
Sarah opened her lips to protest she didn’t care a brass sou what Mr. Alexander thought about her, but closed her lips again. Was it quite true? She didn’t know. Nevertheless, she worked quite happily all afternoon, baking piles of biscuits and shortbread, things that would keep. And thought she was lucky that she and Mrs. Mac got on so well together. It wasn’t easy to find a woman who liked another pottering about her kitchen.
Sarah began packing up the men’s afternoon tea. They were working well away from the house, and Sarah would take it to them in the jeep.
“One cup less, lass,” said Mrs. Mac to her. “Grant is coming over to the house for his. He has some book work to do.” She added, looking sharply at Sarah, “And don’t slip away to the cottage for yours. Let him see how you work. I always tell him what you’ve done for me in any case ... but dinna run away. Besides, I want you to make up some lemon curd, and about three large jars of salad dressing, and I must admit you’ve got a knack with the dressing. I’m always leaving mine to attend to something else and getting it curdled. Now mind what I say, and come back.”
Sarah delivered the afternoon tea, said coolly, “I believe you’re coming back to the house for yours, Mr. Alexander?”
“Yes. I’ll come back in the jeep with you. Bill will bring my hack back, won’t you, Bill?”
Sarah went round to the off-side of the jeep.
Grant Alexander said, “Oh, get in the driving seat. It amuses me to have my partner drive me. Might as well make some use of you.”
Sarah, tight-lipped and silent, drove back. One thing, he’d disappear into the den and she could get on with her work in the kitchen.
He didn’t. He brought out a sheaf of papers, cleared a small table for himself, and sat down with them.
Mrs. Mac looked at him, said, with the air of a woman who doesn’t like menfolk cluttering up the kitchen, “Wouldn’t you rather work in the den, Grant, where you’d have more room?”
He laughed. “That’s one way of putting it, Mrs. Mac darling—what you really mean is that you’d like more room. I’m staying here. A man must be master in his own house.”
Mrs. Mac sniffed and said no more. Sarah worked on, deftly setting biscuits on the big trays for the double oven range, and using the electric range too, so she had no waiting to do.
They had afternoon tea, with Grant disposing of an incredible amount of oatcakes, pikelets, and shortbread. Mrs. Mac went away for something.
Grant looked across at Sarah, intent on icing some spice biscuits.
“I’ll hand it to you, Sarah, you certainly know how to cook.”
That was the first time he had used her Christian name. She hoped he’d realize her flushed cheeks were due to the heat of the stove.
Her eyes were scornful. “Be careful, Mr. Grant. I might be as perfidious in that as you think I am in other things.”
His glance was sharp. “How?”
She shrugged. “Well, it’s elementary ... ‘the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach,’ and all that. Don’t let my cooking warp your judgment.”
“Well, you once said I was just ... if not merciful ... so I believe in giving the devil her due.”
Rory came in, and saved Sarah an answer. “Where’s Pauline?” asked Sarah.
Rory mumbled through a mouthful of crumbly oatcake, “Oh, she’s gone off for a bit on the pony.”
“Along the road?”
“No. She knows you don’t like us roaming the roads on the ponies. She took to the paddocks.”
Sarah said sharply, “She’s not up to any mischief, is she, Rory? You’ve got the look of shielding her.”
Grant laughed suddenly. “What sort of a look is that, Rory? Here, let’s have a look at you.”
Rory said to Sarah, “I don’t know, honest, Sis. She wouldn’t say where she was going.”
Sarah said, anxiously this time, “Rory, she didn’t have her crusading look, did she?”
Grant laughed with real mirth. “Great Scott! My education is progressing rapidly this afternoon. I’d not realized how many kinds of looks the Isbister-Rendalls have. What’s her crusading look, for pity’s sake?”
Sarah said shortly, “The sort of look Pauline wears when she is going to tell someone what she thinks about rabbit-traps that aren’t humane, or someone keeping a dog tied up without fresh water, or putting a frame round a cow’s neck to stop it getting through fences.”
“Oh,” said Grant gravely. “I see.”
Rory said reluctantly, “She did look a bit that way, Sarah, you know, as if she was trying to hide it. Still, she might be just going to have a canter.”
“I certainly hope so,” said Sarah, and rushed to rescue some over melted butter from the top of the range.
Rory reported half an hour later that Pauline was over at the cottage, and seemed all right, so Sarah breathed a sigh of relief, and promptly stopped worrying.
Later, out of the window, she saw Pauline taking grain and fresh water to the poultry, and confining them in their runs for the night. The fowls all wandered about on open range here, never going far, and having access to a little stream that meandered about the yards.