Highland Interlude Read online

  Highland Interlude

  Lucilla Andrews

  Copyright © The Estate of Lucilla Andrews 2019

  This edition first published 2019 by Wyndham Books

  (Wyndham Media Ltd)

  27, Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX

  First published 1968

  www.lucillaandrews.com

  The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, organisations and events are a product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, organisations and events is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  Cover artwork images © Irina Bg / Marcin Sylwia Ciesielski (Shutterstock)

  izusek (istockphoto.com)

  Cover artwork design © Wyndham Media Ltd

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  Also by Lucilla Andrews

  from Wyndham Books

  The Print Petticoat

  The Secret Armour

  The Quiet Wards

  The First Year

  A Hospital Summer

  My Friend the Professor

  Nurse Errant

  Flowers from the Doctor

  The Young Doctors Downstairs

  The New Sister Theatre

  The Light in the Ward

  A House for Sister Mary

  Hospital Circles

  One Night in London (The Jason Trilogy Book 1)

  A Weekend in the Garden (The Jason Trilogy Book 2)

  In an Edinburgh Drawing Room (The Jason Trilogy Book 3)

  Wyndham Books is reissuing

  all of Lucilla Andrews’s novels.

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  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

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  Chapter One

  TO GLASGOW AS CHILDREN’S ESCORT

  I was on theatre call with Sister Orthopaedic that Thursday night. Normally Thursday was the quietest night of our theatre week, but the start of the Easter school holidays and the sudden arrival of spring in the last few days had doubled the London traffic and our intake of accident admissions. Our first emergency operation that night started at ten. It was twenty to three and five operations later before the theatre was cleared and reset with the basic emergency setting always left in readiness.

  Sister came out of the duty-room as I switched off the theatre lights. ‘What remains to be done, Nurse Wade?’

  ‘Just a final check round the outhouses, Sister.’ I yawned behind my mask. ‘Unless we start up again.’

  ‘For everyone’s sake,’ she replied wearily, buttoning her cuffs, ‘God forbid. Those men still have their night rounds to do. Incidentally, did I hear them all moving off when I was changing?’

  ‘Yes, Sister. Mr Dawkins (the Senior Orthopaedic Registrar) looked in to ask me to say goodnight to you.’

  She pursed her pale lips. ‘It’s a pity Mr Dawkins’ manners don’t equal his surgery, but I suppose one can’t have everything. Right. I’m off to the Office to report to Night Super, and then I hope we can both get to bed. You look ready for yours after this long stint.’

  ‘Just as long for you, Sister.’

  ‘But after ten years in this job, Staff Nurse, I’m more accustomed to long stints.’

  The department was very quiet after she had gone, and the air-conditioner hummed to itself like an over-worked bee. I checked, then switched off lights, in the anaesthetic room, the glove room, the tin room, the autoclave room. As sister had a fixation about sleeping students on the gallery benches, having once caught one sleeping off a hangover there years ago, I went up to double-check, even though I had already had a good look up from the theatre floor. Sister hadn’t many fixations, but the few she had could send her blood-pressure shooting up. As she was, on the whole, an amiable and hard-working woman, her theatre nurses and most of the men working with her were perfectly willing to indulge her little ways. But not Mr Dawkins. He refused to indulge any but his own little ways. Consequently, though once Sister Orthopaedic’s speciality had been tea and soothing words between cases, since Mick Dawkins became S.O.R. tea was only served in the surgeons’ room at the end of a list, and according to Joe Fenton, the Junior Orthopaedic Houseman, no member of the Orthopaedic Unit now dared taste the tea before trying it out first on a junior dresser.

  Though the men had gone, I left their room until last, and from old habit, knocked loudly before going in. It was an accepted, if unproven, fact in our hospital, St Martha’s, that any nurse straying into the surgeons’ room while still occupied was not only risking her theatre sister’s fury, but seriously considering changing to an older profession. I was half-way up the room before I saw Joe Fenton sleeping on the desk. ‘Hey, Joe! Wake up!’

  The desk was tucked between changing alcoves, sinks, and file cupboards. He had been writing notes. His fair head was on his arms, and he did not stir at my voice or when I shook him. Quickly I soaked a towel in cold water. ‘Sorry, love, but you can’t sleep here!’ I slapped the towel on his face. ‘Sister won’t approve.’

  ‘Oh, Christ! Liz, you bitch!’ He pushed me off and stood up, shaking himself like a puppy. ‘Oh, God, why can’t I die, peacefully? The others gone?’

  ‘Ages ago.’ I retrieved the scattered notes as he stuck his head under the nearest cold tap. ‘So must you. Sister’s gone to the Office, but there’ll be murder if she gets back and finds you still here. Mick Dawkins didn’t say goodnight to her, nicely.’

  ‘Silly sod with his right little touch of the God Almighty. But handy with his knife.’

  ‘And so’ll Sister be if you don’t get moving.’ I threw him his white coat, pushed his notes under his arm, and propelled him to the door. ‘Off, stat!’

  ‘Not yet.’ He propped his long, thin body against the wall between the fire appliances and buttoned his shirt. ‘I’ve just remembered why I hung on after the others. I’ve got to talk to you, Liz. I’m in one bloody hell of a spot.’

  ‘As we’ll both be if Sister gets back now. Can’t this wait?’

  He said simply, ‘No. Too serious. Aren’t you off this weekend?’

  I glanced at the corridor clock. With luck we might have five minutes. ‘One
-thirty Friday to seven-thirty Monday. Why?’

  He hesitated. ‘You know it’s all fixed for me to take the kids up to Glasgow as Dad’s got to take this business trip to Italy?’

  ‘Yes. And ‒’

  ‘And you know Jadley-Grey rang Dawkins between those first two tonight?’ I nodded. ‘Guess what, sweetie! Our Mr Jadley-Grey is going to do a demonstration list here on Saturday morning for the benefit of a posse of V.I.P. orthopods. M.D. was almost human. He said he was dead sorry to bugger up my week-end, but as Jadley-Grey is our pundit, that’s the way it’ll be. So I sort of thought of you, Liz. Will you take ’em up for me?’

  I leant against the opposite wall. ‘To Glasgow?’

  He said, ‘I know it’s asking a hell of a lot and means spending most of the week-end in trains, but could you face it? Dad won’t hear of them going alone, though I think they’d be fine, but he’s our old man and he says no.’

  ‘And what happens in Glasgow?’

  ‘You just hand ’em over to Uncle Dougal at Glasgow Central Saturday morning, soon as your train gets in. He can’t come down for them as he’s lecturing in Glasgow tomorrow night. He’s paying all expenses up for the kids and mine both ways, and Dad’s paying for the kids’ return. It’s all laid on ‒ reservations made ‒ the lot. Oh, no!’ He slapped his forehead. ‘Just remembered! You’re going down to some woman in Sussex for some party Saturday night.’ He was not the weeping type, but he was very tired. He looked about to burst into tears. ‘What do I do, Liz? I can’t think of anyone else to ask.’

  ‘Relax, love. If it’s all right with your father I’ll take ’em.’

  ‘What about your party?’

  ‘There’ll be other parties ‒ and anyway, you know my views on blind dates.’

  ‘What about this woman?’

  ‘We were at school together. She’s just married. I can meet her husband some other time. She’s a nice soul. She’ll understand.’

  ‘You’re sure?’ He beamed at me. ‘Liz, I could kiss you!’

  ‘Not here you can’t, chum. Out, now! Give me the details in the morning.’

  He blew me a kiss and vanished a couple of minutes before Sister returned. She was rather peeved. ‘Really, Nurse Wade, you are a dawdler. You should be changed by now. Do get a move on or we’ll never get off.’

  I got a move on; we had no more emergency calls that night; I had just time to wonder if I needed to have my head examined before I was asleep.

  My school friend asked me the same when I rang her before going on duty next morning. ‘And why does it have to be you? This Joe Fenton your steady?’

  ‘No. I just like him.’

  ‘Elizabeth! It’s too early for a coy chat.’

  ‘I’m not being coy.’ I explained having known and liked Joe for years and, as she had known me even longer, added, ‘His mother died two months before my grandfather.’

  She said in a different tone, ‘Oh. Yes. I’m getting the picture. Go on.’

  ‘I’ve never met the rest of his family as they live in Cornwall. There’s a big gap between him and these kids. His twin brother and sister are nearly twelve, and the older boy’s just fourteen.’

  ‘Surely they’re old enough to travel alone?’

  ‘I’d have thought so. So does Joe. Their father says no. As he hasn’t re-married,’ I said thoughtfully, ‘he probably feels he has to fuss for both. Like Grandfather.’

  ‘But, Liz dear, he was much older!’ She changed the subject, smartly. ‘What part of Scotland?’

  ‘You mean where does this uncle live? Somewhere in the Highlands, but that’s not my baby, as all I have to do is hand them over to him at Glasgow.’

  ‘Uncle got a family?’

  ‘Not as far as I know, but that’s not much. He’s in tropical medicine and worked in Africa for World Health for years until last Christmas. Not sure what he’s doing now. Joe hasn’t said. Probably some job in Scotland.’

  ‘Guess so. You been to Scotland, Liz?’

  ‘No. Think I’ll see much from the train?’

  ‘If you can see in the dark and the kiddiwinks don’t start ripping the seats. Have fun ‒ come down to see us soon.’

  I was fond of her and very glad she had taken it so well. I had had to put Joe first for a reason I could not really explain to her, since of all my friends he had been the only one who had properly understood how my grandfather’s death had hit me. He was still my only Martha’s friend with whom I had been able to discuss my parents’ death in an air crash when I was seven. I had then been spending a holiday with my paternal grandfather, a widower and only other close relative. Grandfather’s home had remained mine until he died in his sleep. He had been both parents and my whole world to me. Joe’s world had fallen apart with his mother’s death. At the time we had recognized each other’s unspoken grief for the agony it was, and mentally borrowed each other’s shoulders. Since then, though we made other friends, other dates, in any problem we turned to each other. We enjoyed our relationship and had long been highly amused by the analyses made on it by our mutual friends. Joe said what really foxed the Orthopaedic Unit was the fact that we’d managed to remain on speaking terms for years without going to bed with each other. ‘Are we sick, Liz? Or a pair of Victorian anachronisms?’ We had yet to work out the answer. It was not losing either of us any sleep.

  The theatre was too busy that morning for us to talk. At lunch-time a large envelope in my post pigeon-hole enclosed my sleeper tickets and a letter written on the back of a blank temperature chart. Joe wrote:

  Have had sleepers altered to your name and rung home. Mrs Evans, Dad’s housekeeper, will be at Euston plus kids, eleven nocte. Uncle D. at Glasgow Central, mané. Kids know his car. Hope they don’t play you up ‒ use strong-arm tactics if necessary. Give my regards and so forth to U.D., and if you want to make him happy chat him up about trop. med. He doesn’t talk much, but he’s all right ‒ doubt he’s bitten a woman in years. Thanks again and love. J.

  Haying a free afternoon, I went along to the Medical School Library.

  The librarian was shocked. ‘D. R. Grant of Edinburgh, Nurse? Has he written anything on Tropical Medicine? My dear young lady! Professor Grant’s work on Trypanosomiasis is now one of the standard textbooks on the subject. And only last year he produced an excellent paper on Generalized Leishmaniasis, and I understand is now working on another textbook. Of course, you know that at the start of the next academic year he is taking the Chair of Tropical Medicine at ‒ dear me ‒ is it Oxford or Cambridge? Professor Mullen was discussing this only yesterday.’

  I apologized meekly for my ignorance. ‘I didn’t know Professor Grant was a Professor.’

  The librarian offered me a disapproving glance and a selection of erudite literature. By tea-time I was well acquainted with the name D. R. Grant M.D., F.R.C.P., on flyleaves and under articles, and fairly well up in the nastier habits of the tsetse-fly.

  I rehearsed in the back of my taxi to Euston. ‘Tell me, Professor, do you miss the tsetse in the Highlands? Did you lecture on Leishmaniasis last night? Generalized, of course?’

  My taxi stopped. Another drew up immediately behind. A long, gangling, very fair boy with a Beatle-cut jumped out and began unloading suitcases. He was so obviously Joe’s younger brother that I smiled. He gave me a dirty look and turned his back. Then the plump, elderly woman with him looked me over before advancing briskly. ‘Miss Elizabeth Wade? I thought so. So kind ‒ so pleased to meet you. I am Mrs Evans, and these are the young people. Robin, Judy, Johnnie, this is your big brother’s kind friend, Miss Wade.’

  The trio looked me up and down in silence. I said, ‘How do you do?’ They were not giving anything away, so they didn’t tell me.

  Mrs Evans was no great help. ‘I’m afraid we are all very shy, Miss Wade ‒ though, mind you, not with Auntie Bessie on the journey up! But somehow I have always understood Young People. I often think those of us not blessed with kiddies of our own do understand The Young better.
Not that some of us can’t be just a little difficult sometimes!’ She wagged an arch finger. ‘But Auntie Bessie understands …’

  I listened with one ear and did some looking over for myself. Robin, the older boy, was already roughly an inch taller than me, and I was five eight. He had mild acne and a very sulky mouth, but he was too like Joe for me to hold anything against him ‒ yet. Judy was equally fair, thin, and much taller than her twin. Her long hair looked too heavy for her small-boned and very intelligent face. She was very pale, but whether with travel-fatigue or because she was naturally so I could not tell. She barely opened her mouth before the train left.

  Johnnie Fenton could have belonged in another family. He was a sturdy child with curly brown hair, a round, cheerful face, and very well-shaped thickly lashed dark-brown eyes. He had far and away the squarest shoulders and most direct gaze I had seen on any child his age. He was as silent as the others, without looking sullen, and though he gave me the impression he wouldn’t much mind if I dropped dead, I doubted he would actually take a hand in the killing.

  I had started counting the hours to Glasgow long before the guard began looking at his watch. Then Robin discovered he had left a suitcase on the wrong side of the barrier. Mrs Evans said didn’t that just go to show how wise his dear father had been not to allow him to escort the twins to Scotland alone? ‘Dear little Robin! We are such an old day-dreamer, aren’t we? We’d probably lose our tickets, luggage, and twins before we got to Glasgow, wouldn’t we?’

  Dear little Robin looked, understandably, as if he would like to throttle her with his bare hands, and disappeared into the train with the twins. I stayed at the window as the train began to move out, then saw a man and a porter racing after us, and opened the door. The man leapt in. The porter flung in the luggage, then very neatly caught the floating pound note.

  ‘Why, thanks a lot!’ The newcomer smiled breathlessly. ‘I surely cut that pretty fine.’

  ‘But you made it.’

  ‘And what is more, all in the one piece.’ He checked his luggage. ‘I hope the jolt has not harmed my rods. I am hoping to get in some real good fishing over the week-end. This the first vacation I have had me in years. Are you on vacation?’