The Lorimer Line (36 page)

She did feel it. His behaviour that day was unforgivable, and he could see that she was upset by it. He was abrupt and uninformative in assigning the work to be done by her. Whenever there was an unusual dressing to be removed and replaced, it was Miss Morton he called. Out of the corner of his eye he watched Margaret as she worked alone. He noted the firm but gentle neatness with which she applied the routine dressings, her sympathetic manner with the patients, the hopeful air with which she reported that she had done everything he had asked, the disappointment with which she heard that Miss Morton might accompany him into the operating theatre but that there was no room for both of them.

The silent struggle continued for five days. It was an unhappy period for Charles, for he was fighting his own considerate nature as well as his more particular feelings about Margaret. He was not surprised, although he pretended to be, when at the end of the week she asked whether she could speak to him.

‘Of course.' Still maintaining his pretence of indifference, he waited to hear that she intended to move to another hospital.

‘I would be glad if our conversation could be a little less public' Margaret looked round at all the occupants of the surgical ward in which they were standing. Charles shrugged his shoulders and thought for a moment. There were few places in the hospital which could be called private, but it was possible that the library might be empty. He led the way there and opened the door for her to go inside. She turned to face him without sitting down.

‘In July I shall be sitting for my diploma examination in Surgery,' she said. ‘I am not likely to do well in it if the rest of my time here is spent as fruitlessly as this past week. No doubt I can find somewhere else to offer me more valuable experience. But I would be interested to know before I leave why you have gone to such pains to deny it to me here.'

He had thought that she would slip away from St Bartholomew's in silence, perhaps even in tears, and had certainly not expected to find himself accused. As a doctor, he had a good deal of experience of women who were sick, of helpless women like his mother, of frivolous women, and of earnest but still subservient women like the other female students he had supervised in the past. He was not at all accustomed to women who stood up for themselves.

‘I am sorry if you have found me unhelpful,' he said weakly.

‘You are not sorry at all,' Margaret replied. ‘Your unhelpfulness has been so sustained that it must have a purpose, and I take the purpose to be my departure. You will discover soon, I hope, that you have succeeded. But I shall have to explain to the Dean my application to be transferred. What reason am I to give? I thought at first that you must be one of those who disapprove of women students, but you have been considerate to my friend. I have done something to anger you, and it seems that it
happened between our first meeting and this week. But you have given me no clue to what it might be. I think I deserve an explanation.'

‘Yes,' he said. He longed to comfort her, for behind the bold words he could hear her voice trembling. She was not finding it easy to challenge him. ‘I mean, yes, you deserve an explanation. But I cannot give it to you. When I said I was sorry, I meant it. My behaviour may have disappointed you earlier as well, and if you noticed it I apologize for that as well. But it is not a matter I can discuss. Your plan to move to another hospital is a wise one. I will send a note to your Dean to say that it is no longer possible for me to supervise two students at once.'

‘After I have gone, you will never be troubled by me again,' said Margaret. ‘So tell me now what this explanation is which cannot be given. Should I not in fairness be allowed to judge for myself what I have done to deserve your coldness?'

Charles turned away and paced up and down the library for a few moments. He had achieved the effect he intended. For her own sake, he had told himself, Margaret must not be allowed to like him, and her antagonism now was clear enough. It would be foolish to jeopardize this success just for the sake of letting her leave with a true picture of his motives. If he hesitated, it was because his respect for Margaret had been increased by her behaviour in the past few days and the past few minutes. Between what he longed to say and what he knew it would be sensible to say, there was a chasm impossible to bridge.

‘Dr Scott,' Margaret began. Her tone rebuked him. Distraught, he turned back to face her.

‘Have you never said those two words before?' he demanded. ‘When you learned my name, did it not strike you as familiar?'

Before answering, Margaret paused long enough to show him that it was unnecessary to continue the conversation;
she had already guessed what he had at last made up his mind to tell her.

‘Yes,' she said quietly. ‘I remarked on it to Lydia. But Scott is a common enough name, and London is not Bristol. It seemed too unlikely a coincidence that we should prove to have been even so remotely connected in the past. You are telling me, then, that our family physician was

‘My father,' he agreed. ‘My father, whom the behaviour of
your
father has driven to the borders of sanity, and perhaps beyond.' It was the first time he had made such an admission. ‘Because of a Lorimer, my parents are destitute, dependent entirely upon myself. Because of a Lorimer, my father is no longer able to face the world.'

‘I am sorry, deeply sorry. But do you hold me to blame for that?'

‘No,' he confessed. ‘And if I had met you in normal circumstances; if I had been properly introduced, knowing your name before I had time to form any opinion on your character, if I had found you to be of no more interest to me than a casual acquaintance, I should have been as polite to you as to any other young lady. If I have been rude - well, I admit frankly that I have treated you inexcusably — it is because my real wish was to know you better, and I was angry that fate should have interposed this barrier between us. I feel as Romeo must have done when he learned who Juliet was. Yet my situation is worse even than Romeo's. I love my father and have no wish to evade my duty to him; nor can I be happy if I cause him pain. The impediment is in my own mind. If it were any other barrier, I could break it down: but not this one.'

‘It would have been kinder of you to tell me this earlier,' suggested Margaret. She had become very pale and Charles feared that she might faint. He pulled out a chair from beneath one of the library tables and put out a hand to support her, but she moved just far enough away to avoid his touch as she sat down.

‘You will understand that I was not aware of your full name until I learned it at the theatre, just as we were parting,' he said. ‘After that I thought it wisest to make you angry. I could not trust myself to hold to my purpose if you were kind to me; and I did not believe that you could understand my responsibilities to my parents.' By now he was as upset as she was, though he struggled to conceal it.

‘I loved my father as much as you love yours,' she told him. ‘At the time when the bank collapsed I was engaged to be married - were you aware of that? The engagement proved to be incompatible with my affection for my father, so it was ended. I am perfectly able to understand your feelings.' There was a very long silence. Then she looked up at him and forced a smile. ‘But that is not to say that I agree with the way you have chosen to express them.'

‘How would you have had me behave? How would you have me behave now?'

‘By all means think of yourself as Romeo if you wish,' she said. ‘But it would be foolish of you to cast me as Juliet. I am not a fourteen-year-old girl pining for a husband. I am twenty-six years old, and in the middle of a professional training. When I am qualified I intend to practise as a doctor. In the course of my career I hope to make many friends amongst my colleagues. Male friends as well as female. You have the reputation, Dr Scott, of being able to accept the prospect of women working as doctors. Can you not also entertain the revolutionary notion of offering them friendship as though they were men?'

‘That would make little difference to the difficulties within my family. I could never so much as mention your name at home.'

‘You have friends, no doubt, on the staff of this hospital,' said Margaret. ‘Do you take them all home and present them to your father, or amuse him in the evenings by reciting their names? I suspect not. But are they any less
your friends for meeting you in one side of your life only? If you feel that it would be a deceit even to continue knowing me as a professional acquaintance, I cannot argue with that. But my own conscience is not at risk, and it is not necessarily just that you should sacrifice me to yours.'

‘I did not see myself as sacrificing you,' said Charles, ‘but as keeping you free from an acquaintanceship which could have nothing to offer and which might cause you distress. I cannot look into the future of my life as clearly as you evidently can into yours.'

‘My view of the future is limited by examinations,' said Margaret. She stood up again, straight-backed and steady-eyed, smiling as cheerfully as though the conversation just ended had been about trivialities, and not one which might have altered the whole course of his life. ‘You must remember from your own student days how implacably each examination follows the one before. At the moment I have only one concern, and that is to acquire as much knowledge and experience of surgery as possible. I hope very much that you are going to tell me now that I may return here next week and count on you to teach me everything you know.'

Charles looked down at her with an unhappiness he could not fathom. He had said far more than he ever intended, but all the agonizing justification for his previous silence and bad manners had been swept away by Margaret's understanding. He had pretended, even to himself, that his boorish behaviour had been entirely in her interest, not his own. Now he had to recognize that he had been protecting himself, and that his defences had been destroyed.

What he had explained to Margaret, and what she seemed to have accepted, was only half the probelm. She had heard him talk of Romeo and Juliet but had interpreted his words solely in terms of Montagues and Capulets, of feuds between fathers. Her solution absolved him of any anxieties on her account, but did not alter the fact that he
loved her and yet would never be able to tell her so more openly than today. The friendship which she seemed to think would be enough for her might be a source of more pain than pleasure to him. This was his last chance to turn away. He could be rude once more, finally and unforgivably rude. He could watch her eyes cloud with hurt and disappointment. He could see her walk out of the room and be sure that this time she would never come back. All this was possible. He struggled to collect his courage.

No, it was not possible. She was smiling at him. Her freckled face was friendly, and trusting even though she had no grounds for trust. He could not bring himself to hurt her again. Instead, he smiled back.

‘You had better come early on Monday,' he said. ‘I intend to perform an ovariotomy. The operation is almost as dangerous as the condition it hopes to relieve. I undertake it only as a last resort for a patient who will certainly die if nothing is done. Many surgeons refuse to attempt it at all, because the high rate of failure does their reputations no good. You have probably not had the opportunity to observe the operation before. It will be useful to you in forming your opinion on its desirability. I shall look forward to seeing you then.'

Margaret's renewed smile was sufficient reward. She held out her hand as though the gesture sealed some kind of compact between them. Charles leaned a little forward as he took it: wanting to kiss her, wishing that she would kiss him. It was impossible, of course. He restrained himself, and she presumably had no such feelings to restrain. Margaret went smiling from the room, leaving him to come to terms as best he could with the bitter-sweetness of a love which was neither rejected nor acknowledged.

Every actress longs for the applause of the crowd - the craving is an inherent part of her nature. Even criticism is better than silence. Margaret's performance, however, had been of an unusual kind. Charles had been her only audience and, since the purpose of her performance was to deceive him, she could not allow him even to guess that she was acting, much less to praise her ability.

The need for appreciation may have been the reason why Margaret took the first opportunity after her return from St Bartholomew's to tell Lydia what had happened, although to herself she made other excuses. Because she had confided in her friend after the fire and again after her encounter with Charles at the theatre, the young surgeon's behaviour at the hospital had come as a shock to Lydia, and his pronounced favouritism towards her had made her uncomfortable. Margaret did not care to be pitied, so it was with a brisk satisfaction that she was able to announce the reason for Charles's cold attitude, and the agreement they had reached for the future.

At first Lydia's reactions were all that could be desired. She was shocked to hear about the elder Dr Scott's condition and his relationship to Charles: she sympathized with the younger man's difficulties and understood his reaction to them. But when it came to the solution which Margaret had produced, Lydia's response was not praise but a frown.

‘Do you think this is wise?' she asked. ‘It seems to me that in the circumstances Charles Scott's decision was a good one, although his means of implementing it was harsh. If it is true that his father's view of your family cannot be changed, it would surely be best to make the break a complete one?'

‘Are you not prepared to believe that a man and a woman can have an ordinary affectionate friendship?' demanded Margaret, piqued by the implied criticism.

‘An older woman and an older man, perhaps.'

‘How old does one need to be? I am hardly a girl any longer.'