With a graceful movement Alaine Jason seated herself in the chair Felicity indicated. "I thought you looked too human to be a sister, too young and pretty too," she remarked as she, in turn, appraised her companion. "What on earth made you take up nursing? You ought to be on the films with a face like yours."
The outspoken remark made Felicity smile. "It may seem odd, but I like nursing and I've an idea I'd find film work dull."
"Oh, I suppose every job has its compensations," Alaine remarked conversationally and although Felicity knew that she should continue her work, she found herself compelled to listen as Alaine Jason chattered on. "I'm in pictures you know, starring in Fettle's new film. My days are chock-a-block with rehearsals, that's why I have to get along to see Guy whenever I can make it; it's no good tying me down to times, I ought to be allowed to see him when I'm free."
"Alaine Jason"-of course Felicity knew the name, she'd had wonderful notices in her first film, it had run for months in the West End. But there was one thing which Felicity couldn't understand. What on earth could Mr. Brenton and this exotic girl have in common? Alaine Jason could surely have had her pick of men, what too had she found in Guy Brenton other than physical attraction? But perhaps more surprising still, how had she appealed to him? Appearance alone would surely never have captivated a man of Guy Brenton's discernment and Felicity would have imagined that this girl's glamour and excitability, betrayed by her every movement, would have been intolerable to a man of his disposition. Perhaps it was the magnetic attraction of opposites.
Almost as if she could read her thoughts, Alaine Jason spoke again. "I expect you are summing me up, wondering how I ever came to fall for such an intellectual serious type!" She rose from her chair and crossed to the window, fidgeted for a moment with a hideous pewter vase-a gift from a grateful, patient-then swung round again. "Guy is a poppet when you really know him, we first met at a Charity Ball." She leaned forward, her hands resting on the sill behind her. "Do you know he was the very first man I'd ever met who behaved as if I didn't exist! He ignored me ... I was furious!" She spoke with such forceful intensity that to Felicity it appeared as if she were acting a part.
"Really?" Felicity felt that the dramatic pause was, in a sense, her cue; she had nothing to say and she had no wish to be Alaine Jason's confidante. With a brisk air of finality which Felicity hoped might have the required effect, she turned deliberately back to the desk. "You must excuse me, I have some work to do, you'll find some magazines on the table and Sister won't be long now."
"I don't think I really want to see her-not if she is anything like that old crow I saw last night-if I can't see Guy now, when can I see him?" Her deep voice expressed the tension which her whole manner disclosed.
"I think it may be all right for him to have visitors by the week-end, why not come along on Sunday?" Felicity suggested.
"Oh, confound all these rules and things," Alaine Jason took a slim gold case from her bag and handed it to Felicity. "Smoke?"
"No, thanks," Felicity smiled as she explained. "Not on duty."
"Another silly regulation. I don't know how you stick it." She applied a lighter to her cigarette then slowly inhaled. Dropping the case back into her bag she reseated herself in the chair and crossed one slender nylon-clad leg over the other. "It doesn't look as if I'll get my own way, So I suppose I ought to go." She looked up and a gleam of fun sparkled in the depth of her greenish-brown eyes. "But I must finish what I was telling you-you know, about Guy and me. He wouldn't run to form, so I was determined to make him! I got right down to it and believe me, it wasn't easy! The whole trouble with Guy is that he's too attractive. Girls fall for him on sight, so he adopted a 'keep off it' manner which became a habit. I soon saw through his technique and decided I'd play up to him. I pretended he bored me to tears, that his type left me cold. That did the trick! He fell for it hook, line and sinker!" She laughed softly at the recollection.
Felicity glanced surreptitiously at the clock. Alaine Jason's frankness bewildered her, there was something inherent in her own nature which felt the disloyalty of such disclosures. She realized that there was no malice in the other girl's remarks, that lack of restraint was second nature to her and that such discussions were everyday occurrences among her own friends. She hoped that Sister would soon make her appearance, she began to feel that Alaine Jason's frivolous small talk was more than she could cope with.
"I don't think Sister should be very long now." Felicity could think of nothing more sensible to say to put an end to Alaine's story. She dreaded that she might launch out on other and more personal incidents. Felicity didn't want to hear, didn't want to listen, but she sensed that. Alaine was waiting to go on, enjoying making fun of what to Felicity was a serious and private matter.
"I don't think it's much good waiting anyway, you've already told me she won't allow me in." Alaine Jason sighed as she got up from her seat and not troubling to find an ash tray, stubbed out her cigarette in the saucer on the tray which Felicity had as yet had no opportunity to remove. "Oh, well, I may as well go. Sorry I can't see him, but at least I've met you. I like you, in fact you aren't my conception of a nurse at all, you must come along to, my flat some time, I'll fix you a drink."
"Thanks," Felicity murmured non-committally.
At the door, Alaine Jason spoke again. "Oh, by the way, I brought Guy some flowers, they are in the taxi, I'll have them sent up. Give them to Guy with my love." She paused again, extending her hand. "So long, I hope you are looking after Guy, he would hate being nursed by that old crow I met last night."
Felicity shook the proffered hand. "Yes, during the day I am attending Mr. Brenton." '
"Good, I'm glad. You're so easy on the eye, tell him from me that from the types I've seen around this place, he's damn lucky!"
That was a message which Felicity could scarcely deliver but as she watched the slim beautifully dressed figure disappear into the lift, she was aware of an inward sense of amusement. That morning she had felt she could cheerfully have slain Guy Brenton's fiancée for all the humiliation she had caused her, now she realized that Alaine Jason was one of those artless people who unintentionally caused trouble yet no one ever found the heart to censure them. She would probably go through life living on her own nerves and fraying other people's! Felicity crossed back to the window and opened it wide-she must clear the office of the mingled smell of scent and tobacco smoke before Sister returned. Then she picked up the neglected tray and carried it to the small kitchen at the end of the ward. She was just setting it down when a porter appeared almost obscured by the flowers he carried cradled against his arm.
"Sent up by Miss Jason-says as 'ow I was to give 'em to you. You'd know what to do wiv 'em."
"Know what to do with them!" Felicity silently echoed the words as she unwrapped the massed blooms, then viewed them with consternation. There wouldn't be enough vases in the entire hospital to hold them! They'd take hours to arrange and even when arranged, hours to keep fresh and watered! Picking up a spray of white lilac she held it to her face, its sweet intoxicating perfume awoke for a fleeting moment almost forgotten memories. Quickly she laid it aside, then with resignation settled down to her task.
CHAPTER SIX
Felicity was relieved when the next few days had passed. The excitement of Guy Brenton's accident, the resulting chatter, were gradually dying down and life was resuming its normal routine. Even the humiliation of her interview with Matron was almost forgotten and she was no longer subjected to endless questions from her fellow nurses. The days had passed swiftly, and in their passing she had even begun to lose her unreasonable dread of entering Guy Brenton's room, that self-consciousness in a patient's presence, which was something she had never hitherto experienced.
On the whole, Felicity had to admit, Guy Brenton wasn't proving a very formidable person to nurse; on the contrary she found him far more tractable to deal with as a patient than he had ever been on the wards. Sometimes she wondered whether Alaine Jason's outspoken revelations had given her a new confidence; she had, perhaps unwittingly, painted such a clear portrait that subconsciously Felicity had begun to wonder what all the fuss was about? She had spent months implicitly following his dictates. The position was now reversed; as his nurse she had every intention of seeing that he followed hers! There was still one thing which gave her constant concern. Guy Brenton, although stronger, made no real headway, he spoke little, and certainly gave her no confidences, but she felt sure he harboured a deep anxiety about the future and must be suffering untold distress as to whether he would ever regain the complete use of his hand. She was certain that if he shared these worries they would surely be easier to bear, and, with any other patient, she knew she would have felt it to be part of her duty to persuade him to speak of his fears, to offer encouragement and so help to lighten the burden. Today the embargo on visitors had been raised and Felicity hoped that Alaine Jason on her visit that afternoon might prove the safety valve which she felt her patient needed. But would she? Felicity had been asking herself that question during the busy hours of the morning, it had constantly been recurring to her, but somehow, when she recalled her brief encounter with Mr. Brenton's fiancée she could not place her in the role of sympathetic listener.