Nurse Ann Wood (18 page)

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

THE dressing-room was crowded and Ann was quickly separated from tier two companions, who indeed had never given her a glance, eager as they were to seek mirrors, and the reassurance that the fifteen-minute journey had done nothing to mar the perfection of hair and complexion.

Ann gave herself a long look. It was heady and exciting to look like this — more beautiful than she had ever been in her life before. For she was sure she did. There had been other gala occasions in her life — those stabbing pinpricks of memory told her that — but never one like this.

She must have stood too long admiring herself, for when she moved back she could see no sign of Mrs. Woods nor of Beverley. They had gone on to the Goldfish cocktail lounge, perhaps assuming that she would not follow. Well, they were going to be surprised.

There was a recklessness about Ann tonight that made her big, lavender grey eyes glow and gave a tinge of color to her lovely skin.

Women in the dressing-room had given her side looks of calculated envy, but now she saw open appreciation of her beauty from many male eyes as she made her way across the vestibule in search of the rest of her party.

She came at last into the gaily decorated lounge and saw Mrs. Woods and Beverley talking to Robert Leedon. There were a lot of other people whom she did not know at all, or only by sight. Then she saw Iain Sherrarde’s aunt, in black, and beside her a slender figure in pale green, with her auburn hair piled high.

Someone must have seen her by the door and mentioned her name, for all at once it seemed as if everybody was turning to look at her. Ann caught, in a lightning flash, the stares of outrage and consternation on the faces of Beverley and Mrs. Woods, and knew in that moment that they were not responsible for her wearing this white dress. And then there was only Iain, as he separated himself from the crowd and came to meet her.

Iain, his light eyes glittering oddly in his dark face. As if in a dream, she remembered running away in the darkness of despair, and finding herself in this man’s arms. And after that, when she had seemed to be submerging in a twilight sea, he had come to her and called her back. He had claimed her as his own in those two encounters, whether he had known it or not. And now for a third time it seemed that his eyes asked a question, and demanded an answer.

She saw no one but him as she gave him her hand and her lovely smile. She did not speak, and he said only one word ... “Anne.”

Time had ceased to have any reality. It seemed to her as they stood looking into each other’s eyes that all eternity whirled and spun them into formless space.

Iain Sherrarde broke the silence at last, rather shakily. “We’re having drinks. What would you like?”

Ann supposed that she answered, for a few moments later she found she had a glass in her hand and Iain’s Aunt Mary was saying in a vaguely bewildered way: “I don’t think I’ve met you before. Surely you are neither a doctor nor a nurse?” And her eyes said, You’re much too pretty to be either.

“I’m a nurse,” Ann replied in a manner that was equally vague, and turned to meet Doctor Lyntrope’s hostile gaze.

“Auntie, surely you see who it is. Miss Woods, who is looking after Emma and Guy. What has happened to them tonight?” she questioned Ann now, her bright blue eyes like bits of splintered glass. “Surely you haven’t left them in charge of that incompetent young woman?”

“They were in bed when I left,” Ann replied, and turned with glowing face and a brilliant smile as Iain Sherrarde came to stand by her elbow.

They went into the ballroom as a group, Beverley and Robert Leedon, Mrs. Trederrick and Doctor Lyntrope and some men whose names Ann didn’t remember, though she had been introduced to them only a minute ago.

Iain Sherrarde’s hand was on her arm, and without speaking they began to dance. Once more the enchantment of another world was around her. It seemed that she danced on the magic sward of fairyland. There was wonder in every moment and a faint, faint remembrance that sooner or later midnight would strike and reality would come into its own.

Iain said thickly, in a voice that she scarcely recognized as his, “Anne, you’ve bewitched me. I’ve been fighting your enchantment from the moment I met you. I can’t bear the thought of your dancing with any other man, and yet all those people are my guests and I ought to see that they’re having a pleasant time. I haven’t yet paid my respects to Matron and...”

Ann smiled at him with eyes that had never looked so softly brilliant as now. “Darling, I — we can wait. I won’t dance with anyone else. I’ll stay by Beverley; that, after all, is why I came.”

“Is it?” he asked fiercely. “Is it?”

“Well, perhaps not. But I didn’t know. I didn’t realize that you...”

Ann did not notice the curious or interested glances back among the official party, and even Doctor Lyntrope’s vindictive stare was unobserved. She looked around for Beverley and found she was missing. Robert Leedon wasn’t there either, and Ann was fairly sure that that “watchdog,” as Beverley had referred to him, would not be far away from the lovely frail girl who had once been his wife.

Mrs. Woods, who had been dancing, came back still with her partner, and Ann said anxiously, “Mrs. Woods, where is Beverley? Is she all right?”

The other gave her a curious smile. “Oh, you’ve remembered her, have you, all at once?”

Ann thought: She is right to be so angry. After all, I
did
come to look after Beverley, and though they told me they didn’t want me to stay with Iain’s party, they didn’t anticipate that Iain would dance first with me.

Mrs. Woods caught her wrist and turned her slightly so that what she said could only be for Ann. “We’ve got to have a reckoning, young woman, you and I. But it can wait till tomorrow. In the meantime, leave Beverley alone. Lee will take care of her and you make yourself scarce. That boy friend of yours is here, I see, so there’s no excuse for you to hang around here.”

Mrs. Woods was very angry indeed, and Ann supposed it was because of Iain’s attention to herself, which had caused Beverley to go off in a pique with Robert Leedon. It had been abundantly clear that Mrs. Woods very much disliked her daughter’s continued friendship with her ex-husband.

But Ann’s spirits were not to be quelled tonight by Mrs. Woods’ annoyance, and not even the news that Ralph Gateworth was here could cast but the faintest of shadows.

And then Iain was by her side, whirling her into the dance again. For him, conventions had gone by the board. He had eyes for no one except herself.

He said at last, “There’s a garden here somewhere, and it isn’t really cold. Let’s go out and talk. There’s so much I want to say. What about a wrap?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Ann replied, remembering that her coat was in Lee’s car.

“Look, there’s Lievers. He’s had his eyes on you all the evening and he’s coming in this direction. Let’s get out quickly.”

The garden beside the hotel was a place of shadows, and there in one of the arbors they stood together for a moment, and then almost wordlessly they were in each other’s arms.

“We’ll be married as soon as I can get a licence,” he said arrogantly, though he had not even proposed.

A fleeting instinct of self-preservation pricked into Ann’s consciousness. Tell him now, it urged. Tell him you aren’t Anne Woods, and you haven’t the faintest idea who you really are. But almost immediately all thought was submerged by the rising excitement of his close embrace.

It was inevitable at so large a gathering that they should be interrupted, and when the garden was all at once invaded by a crowd of nurses and their escorts, Iain whispered reluctantly, “We shall have to go back, darling.”

Ann nodded speechlessly, her eyes and thoughts far away. He kissed her again. “Ann, shall we keep this to ourselves for tonight? It seems too wonderful to bring out in front of everybody ... here...”

Again she gave her assent without words, resolving that when he returned again to his duty dances she would creep away somewhere on her own, hugging to herself the precious knowledge that he loved her.

They, went back to the ballroom, scarcely exchanging a word, yet in such close accord that it seemed they were still in each other’s arms.

It was just at the entrance to the ballroom that it happened. Ann caught sight of Ralph Gateworth, his eyes glittering, a triumphant smile on his face, and the shadow of disaster seemed to fall darkly across her.

And then she saw him ... and all that she had forgotten — all that she had wanted so desperately to forget — came rushing back to her.

Michael ... Michael Lenforth, whom she had believed she had loved, Michael whose ring she had worn, Michael who had let her down so badly...

She saw his face, eager, ardent, and heard him say, “Ann, so at last I’ve found you!”

And then above it, Gateworth’s voice in hateful mockery. “Doctor Lenforth, your other fiancée, is here with a party from Queen Frida’s, Anne. He has been looking all over the place for you.” He turned to Sherrarde and the mockery deepened. “An odd thing, isn’t it, Mr. Sherrarde, for a young woman to be engaged to two men at the same time and then to run out on them both in order to make the going with a third one. But our little Anne is nothing if she isn’t ambitious. Rather like a ladder we’ve been, for her. Me, just on the nursing staff, then a junior pathologist in hospital, and now ... the Director of the Sherrarde Institute. You’re a little tramp, Anne, but I have to hand it to you. You get away with it, sweetie!”

It was insolence at its most outrageous. Perhaps Ann’s and Iain’s faces had given too much away, perhaps whatever the situation, he would have made the same wounding remarks.

But for both of them the shock was too great — this public reference to their love in a gloating voice that heaped it also with shame.

“Ann, my darling, where have you been?” This was Michael, standing in front of her, speaking as if nothing had ever gone wrong between them. “Tell me that this fellow is lying when he says he’s also engaged to you. As for this man...”

Ann found herself wondering whether she was going to faint and hoping almost desperately that she might. But she knew she wasn’t going to find escape as easily as that.

Oh, if only she had obeyed that impulse and told Iain earlier that she was not Anne Woods — not the girl whom he loved despite her reputation as a man-chaser. Confronted with two other men, what was he going to think?

It was all too evident. He was standing quite still, his face hard, a fine white line around his tightly closed lips. Ann’s glance flickered over Gateworth. No need for any self-reproach there. She had never seen him before she went to Fountains. And then it came to Doctor Michael Lenforth, the man she had once been going to marry.

The, curtain of memory had rolled back fully now. Once again she was standing at the door of the pathology department ... with the door of the little side office half open. Michael, and in his arms that theatre staff nurse with the fluffy light hair. And beside Ann, Nurse Comprerse, with a rather malicious smile, saying: “We’ve all been wondering how long it would take you to find out. It’s been going on for so long.”

Ann remembered that she had turned blindly, her hands outstretched, fumbling for the way...

She didn’t look at Michael any more. She had walked out of his life completely when she had gone stumbling along the corridor away from the pathology department. Her eyes were only for Iain, his face, twisted to a sarcastic smile, and his nostrils dilated slightly with distaste.

“Excuse me now, Miss Woods, if I leave you to talk over old times with your friends. I mustn’t neglect my guests any longer.” He gave her a jerky little bow, and his eyes, icy as a blast from the North Pole, forbade her to dare to try to justify herself.

Ann watched him walk away and then her eyes, grave and aloof, flickered again over the two men. Gateworth was still grinning, but Ann wasted no words on him. He had done his worst. He had confronted her with Michael Lenforth and forced her to remember. As to Michael himself...

“Ann, my darling,” he began, “you look wonderful. There’s so much I want to say, and to know.”

Her big lavender grey eyes set him at a remote distance. “I’m sorry, Michael, but there’s nothing I have to say, or that I want to hear. When I returned your ring, I told you that everything between us was finished, and I haven’t changed my mind. I’m sorry if you’ve been brought down here on false pretences.”

She spun round, and almost ran from them, searching instinctively for somewhere to hide.

She wondered afterwards what she would have done had she not run almost into the arms of a kindly cloakroom attendant.

“Why, dearie!”

Ann was swaying as the woman caught her. Providentially, the corridor was deserted, and there was a service kitchen nearby.

“Come in here for a minute.” There was tolerance in the kindly voice. A pretty girl who had drunk more than was good for her at a dance, she was thinking.

But the woman’s expression changed when she saw Ann’s face. “Why, madam, you’re ill! Can I get you anything? Or find your friends?”

Ann shook her head. “Would you please leave me here to rest? I just want to be quiet. I shall be better after a while.”

“I’m just going on duty at one of the cloakrooms. You’re sure you’ll be all right, madam?”

Ann nodded and the woman went away with a backward glance and a promise that she would come back to see the young lady when she could spare a moment.

The girl sat on the hard wooden chair which the woman had placed for her and rested her aching head on the cool wood of the cupboard. She was shaking with nerves and tension. So this was what she had been running away from, she told herself with sick distaste.

She looked back and viewed the past as if she were watching a film. Everything was painfully clear now, and it all seemed so long ago, as if it had happened in another existence.

It had been a rather foggy morning, she remembered, when she had arrived back in London. Her soft lips were straightened with pain and her hands trembled as she picked up her two suitcases and looked for a porter. How grim those ten weeks had been since she had left Queen Frida’s to go home to nurse her mother.

The bad news of her mother’s illness had come just at the time when she had learned that she had gained her State Certificate, and was all set for another year to study for her Queen Frida’s Certificate. After that, then...

“Then” had centred completely round Michael Lenforth, with whom she had become friendly in her first year. They had got engaged last year when he had been promoted and they were to be married as soon as she had qualified.

When the bad news about Mummy’s illness had come, Matron had given her compassionate leave, though Michael had tried very hard to dissuade her from going home to far away Cumberland. Perhaps he had known that once she had gone he would fall an easy victim to temptation.