Edinburgh Excursion Read online

  My mind was on John. Not painfully, but in that strange, pale mental plane in which it is so difficult to sort the dreams from the reality. Did it really happen? Was it really me? And if so, how can the me now be so divorced from the me then that I can’t properly remember what he looked like? A little like Robbie? No. Robbie looks like himself. ‘What did you say, Sandra?’

  She repeated herself.

  ‘Charlie,’ I said absently. ‘Yes. I’ve just seen him too.’

  ‘Trust you! No wonder you’re in one of your daydreams! Don’t forget he’s hooked! Too bad you can drive, isn’t it? He might’ve given you another lift!’

  She was so annoyed that it seemed just as well for Charlie’s sake that he was engaged. ‘When did your gears jam, Sandra?’

  She was the only girl I had ever met who could bridle. She did it superbly. ‘Don’t be bitchy, Alix! Anyway, I’ve got a date tonight.’

  ‘Don’t forget the monthly report’s due tomorrow.’

  ‘I’ve done all but today’s!’

  Gemmie snorted when she heard this. ‘She would! She’s so bloody efficient she makes me feel inadequate.’

  That was true. Sandra managed to combine the most active social life in our set with extreme efficiency on duty.

  Gemmie’s cold was so much worse that she made only a token protest when I insisted on taking her temperature and then ringing Miss Bruce.

  ‘Poor Miss Downs,’ said Miss Bruce. ‘Undoubtedly this is some cold virus she’s not as yet encountered. Tell her to stay in bed, and I’ll be up to see her in the morning. Thank you, Miss Hurst.’

  Gemmie mopped her streaming eyes. ‘How many cold viruses are there then? I’ve forgotten.’

  ‘I think Europe has about one hundred and ninety, and we’ve roughly fifty-five in England ‒ or thereabouts.’

  ‘Right bundle of sunshine you are, love! Sure you don’t mind fetching me supper in bed?’

  ‘Call me Miss Nightingale, but not Flo. I do so dislike familiarity from my patients.’

  She was half asleep when I removed her supper-tray. ‘I’ll love you for ever for this, Alix.’

  ‘Oh, duckie, not sure I fancy you.’ I turned off her light. ‘Sleep well.’ When I looked in ten minutes later she was flat out and snoring.

  I had to get on with my monthly report, but the prospect of filling in any type of official form invariably reduced me to a dithering wreck. So I had to wash up our supper things, then the kitchen sink obviously had to be scrubbed, and the floor washed. Then I spring-cleaned the bathroom. I had the vacuum-cleaner in the sitting-room before I remembered the noise would wake Gemmie and saw the clock on the bookshelf. Reluctantly I put away the unused machine, swamped the sitting-room table with my patients’ notes and cards, and began sorting them.

  New patients; old patients; number of visits; visits in my own area; visits on relief-work. Whom had I relieved? That meant another stack. Children one to five; children five to fifteen; patients over sixty-five ‒ oh no! The first two stacks had to be re-sorted.

  Injections? Another general post. Injections had to be specified. Streptomycin, antibiotics, insulin, mersalyl, anti-anaemic ‒ Mrs MacRae’s second twin was a girl and they were calling her Roberta. Other injections? Had I given any? Yes, several.

  How many visits had lasted forty-five minutes and over? Miss Bruce and the city fathers had to know. Again, several, but none to compare with the time against Mrs Thompson’s name. Nearly a month back already. Time here went even faster than in London.

  ‘Time, a maniac scattering dust …’

  No dust, and tonight Meggy could have been dead.

  I had finished and was trying to summon the energy to make coffee when our front-door bell rang. I answered it quickly to save a second ring’s disturbing Gemmie. Robbie was on our doorstep. ‘Am I too late to come in, Alix?’

  ‘Shush. Gemmie’s asleep.’ I kept my voice down. ‘Come on in.’

  ‘You’re sure it’s not too late?’

  It was after ten, but still broad daylight. I shook my head, smiling, and jerked a thumb at the sitting-room door. He followed me in silently. I closed the door and told him about Gemmie’s cold and that Catriona was still out. ‘What are you doing wandering abroad at this hour?’

  He had been having a drink with some friend who had offered to lend him a boat over the next weekend. ‘He’s got a mooring at Cramond. Aren’t you off Saturday? Come sailing.’

  ‘Thanks, I’d like that, though I can’t sail. Never done any. Will it matter?’

  ‘Not for the type of sailing we’ll be doing Saturday.’

  I looked at his expression. ‘Then why, to quote Mrs Duncan, the Sabbath face?’

  ‘I’m a wee bit surprised you don’t sail. I thought sailing and skiing were the ‘in’ outdoor sports of the English upper classes.’

  ‘I’ll check on that for you next time I run into one of the English upper class.’

  He froze. ‘That, from a girl with your accent, is either patronizing or tactful. For your information, I find both equally offensive.’

  I took a closer look at him. He had not been so belligerent since those few minutes the first morning he called round. I wondered how much he had been drinking, though he did not look drunk and if he had to work later he was unlikely to have had more than his usual single whisky, and that slowly. ‘On call tonight?’

  ‘From eleven-thirty. Why?’

  He hated the world too much for the truth. ‘Just wondering if you’d time to join me for coffee.’

  That lit a spark in his dark, angry eyes, but it was not laughter ‘I don’t have to rush, but why bother making coffee?’

  I resisted the urge to explain I was right out of hemlock. ‘I need reviving. I’ve just spent two hours filling in one form, and my blood-sugar’s in a bad way.’ I smiled to spread sweetness and light. ‘For your information, you’re now observing my typical post-form syndrome.’

  ‘Which obviously requires instant adrenalin.’ He hauled me into his arms and kissed my mouth, my face, my neck, as if he couldn’t recall his last meal and didn’t know when he would get another. ‘Isn’t this the right therapy, Alix?’ he muttered breathlessly.

  I needed breath. ‘If you say so.’

  He raised his face to scowl at mine. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘That I’m now being intentionally tactful.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because you’re overwhelmingly stronger than I am, and I’m not a masochist.’

  His eyes looked darker, his chin bluer, and his very regular features less clear-cut. ‘You’ve never minded my kissing you before.’

  ‘Before was different, and you know it.’

  ‘Maybe.’ His hold tightened. ‘As you knew what you were doing when you hustled me in here on tiptoe not to wake Gemmie, let me know Catriona’s away and we’ve the place to ourselves.’

  ‘I ‒ Oh, blimey!’ I stifled my laugh against his shoulder. ‘Robbie, I’m terribly sorry. I honestly am! I only whisked you in behind this closed door as any voices in our hall echo all round the flat. Don’t know why. Something’s wrong with the hall’s acoustics.’

  He let go of me so abruptly I nearly fell over backwards and had to steady myself on the back of a chair. He stomped to the other side of the room, put his fists on his hips, and glowered at me. ‘That’s not all that’s wrong! When you’re over the best bloody good laugh you’ve had in years you may as well tell me. What’s wrong with my technique?’

  I was actually laughing at myself, not him. I was remembering my Untouchables. Had Bassy been present he’d have been hysterical. And John. ‘Your wide-eyed-jolly-hockey-sticks technique is so inhibiting, darling, that most men’ll read your come-hither as an instant go-forth. But I’m not most men. I’m different.’ He was.

  I tried to explain my laughter to Robbie. He took it as more tact. He knew he was a failure. ‘If not, would I be sitting here holding a P.M.? Even if I got you wrong I’d you in my arms. Why could
n’t I keep you there? Or get a flicker out of you? And that’s happened before! What do I do wrong?’

  ‘Robbie dear, I’m not sure I’m the right person ‒’

  ‘Ach, don’t give me that!’ He sat astride an arm of the sofa. ‘You’re a pretty, experienced London girl. You’ve been around. You could teach me a lot, and I wish you would. I find you very attractive.’

  ‘Well, thanks.’ I needed a chair. ‘So you think all London girls are swinging, promiscuous chicks, addicted to pot, L.S.D., and other kinky devices?’

  He said sternly, ‘I’m not suggesting you’re daft enough to be hooked on any drug!’

  ‘That’s a break.’ I swallowed. ‘The rest?’

  ‘I’m not talking about the rest. I’m talking about you. I want you. Why haven’t I got you?’

  I studied him for a few seconds. He was now more hurt than angry. It was mostly my fault, and I liked him. So I told him the truth.

  When I finished he was sitting on the arm of my chair stroking my hair. ‘Were I not such an insensitive lecher I’d have worked this out for myself. But when I came in just now I honestly thought’ ‒ he hesitated ‒ ‘no, that’s not right! I was in such a bloody black mood I wasn’t thinking at all.’

  ‘I saw that. Why were you so mad? Anything to do with me?’

  ‘No.’ His face hardened unrecognizably. ‘I ran into someone I once knew earlier this evening.’

  ‘Old girlfriend?’

  ‘Aye. Something was said between us that got under my skin.’

  ‘Like “Get back to the Gorbals, laddie”?’

  He breathed in sharply. ‘Was I that obvious?’

  ‘Yes. Want to talk about her?’

  ‘No. Mind?’

  I shook my head. ‘Anyway, this seems to be my night on the psychiatric couch. Maybe I needed it. I feel much better for unburdening. I hope you don’t mind?’

  ‘Ach, no.’ He kissed me, but gently. ‘What I need, Alix, is a wife, and not merely as I’ll have to have one when I turn G.P. But I want a wife, a home, a family. I wish I didn’t just find you physically attractive. I wish I loved you. I’d ask you to marry me tonight if I did.’

  ‘Then I’m glad you don’t. The one thing a beautiful friendship can’t survive is a rejected proposal of marriage. You know?’

  His face hardened again. ‘I do, indeed. Mind you,’ he added too quickly, ‘were I not in my present job I might be fool enough to persuade myself a purely sexual attraction would be a good enough basis for marriage. But in obstetrics one sees so much married hell. I’m not risking that for you or myself, though if you’d have me I think you’d probably make me a very good wife ‒’ He stopped, as Catriona looked in and backed out. ‘Is that clock right?’ He checked with his watch. ‘My God, it’s slow. I’m due on wagon call in fifteen minutes, and if I’m not there fifteen minutes from now the first emergency’ll call in. Come and see me out.’

  On the landing he fixed our front-door latch to close without locking and shut the door. ‘If the citizens of Edinburgh had less active sex lives I might have time to attend to my own. Pick you up here, one on Saturday. Can you swim?’

  ‘Not well.’

  ‘No problem. Getting the life-jackets out of the hatches’ll leave more room for the skeletons. Thanks for not rattling mine.’

  ‘No trouble.’

  He ran one finger gently along my face. ‘Maybe I could do a lot worse. So might you. Shall we try and sort this out?’

  ‘It can wait. The baby-wagon won’t.’

  ‘You’re so right!’ He went down three at a time. I heard him talking to someone on the stairs, but was too preoccupied by the many thoughts he had sparked off to register more than distant male voices. It was chilly on the landing, but I sat on the nearest stair to think things out.

  ‘Locked yourself out, Miss Hurst?’

  I looked up without getting up. Charlie was looming over me and looked a different man in a superbly cut dinner-jacket and very bad temper. ‘Hallo! No, I’m just thinking. What’s up with your lift?’

  ‘Grounded below since last night, and likely to remain there several days. Some vital part has to be manufactured before it can be replaced.’

  ‘Is that why the front hall was full of mechanics when we got back this evening? Bad luck.’ That ‘luck’ reminded me of Meggy. I thanked him for saving her. ‘Dr MacDonald told me.’

  He bowed slightly. ‘News travels fast.’

  I was sorry to see him so glum and gave him a big smile. ‘Even good news!’

  ‘Precisely. Goodnight.’ He walked round me and took the last flight so fast I wondered if he had run into an old flame, had a row with Josephine, if there was something disturbing about these short, white high-summer nights, or if I had merely said the wrong thing.

  I had.

  Chapter Seven

  Catriona showed me the ‘Forthcoming Marriages’ column in yesterday’s Scotsman at breakfast. I did a double take. ‘I suppose this is right?’

  ‘Oh yes. There was quite a bit of talk about it at the dinner-party last night. Not that Aunt Elspeth was surprised. She never thought Josephine Astley would marry Charlie Linsey, and she knows this other man’s mother well. He was at school with Charlie.’

  ‘Poor old Charlie!’ I wished I had done my thinking elsewhere last night. ‘Not that I’m all that surprised, now I think about it. Not with his ghastly turn-ups. But why didn’t your aunt think Josephine would marry him? Presumably she knows him. Why haven’t you told us?’

  She was looking neurotic again. ‘I ‒ I don’t like ‒ well ‒ gossip. Aunt Elspeth knows so many people, having lived here most of her life. She ‒ er ‒ didn’t think them compatible. Is that Gemmie moving?’

  ‘She was still asleep when I looked in five minutes ago.’ I reached for the paper. ‘Wonder if this’ll last?’

  ‘The date’s fixed for later this month.’

  ‘Someone’s a fast worker,’ I said tritely.

  ‘According to Aunt Elspeth, they’ve been friends years. Charlie must’ve guessed it was in the air.’

  I thought back a few months. ‘Not necessarily. I’m really very sorry for Charlie.’

  ‘He’ll get over it. Men do. A man can always find another woman. Och, yes, I know they talk all that blah about love, but what they actually mean is lust. That’s easily satisfied if you’re a man.’

  It was some time since either Gemmie or I had made the mistake of believing Catriona’s soft, sugar-plum veneer went even skin-deep, but this did surprise me. ‘I’ve gathered you didn’t reckon much to men, but not that you reckoned this low. Or are you getting Gemmie’s cold? You’re rather puffy round the eyes.’

  ‘That’s my report. Took me till three.’ She cleared the table as I began washing up. ‘But apart from my father, brother, and the rare, sweet laddie like Bassy, I’ve no opinion of men at all!’

  ‘They aren’t all creeps. Think of our Wilf ‒’

  ‘And for every Wilf I can think of cohorts of insensitive lechers I wouldn’t trust further than I can spit! And what’s more,’ added Catriona in her most Scottish manner, ‘I never spit!’

  ‘Hey, slaves!’ Gemmie’s head came round the door. ‘Eight-o’clock news is just starting. Thought you’d like to know!’

  The morning was half over before I had caught up with it or realized Catriona had rung a mental bell. Briefly, it seemed strange she should have so exactly echoed Robbie. Then I remembered their mutual training hospital. ‘Insensitive lecher’ must at some time have been top of their hospital’s insult pops. Last year, after a particularly lively series of protests in Trafalgar Square, ‘fascist imperialist lackey’ had echoed round every department in Martha’s. I once heard a junior sister hurl it at a male student who had rashly walked round a screen closing a female ward to all male visitors. He had beat it as if the Red Guard were after his blood.

  Charlie’s car passed mine twice that morning. We met in person on my afternoon visit to Archie. Recalling my supersensi
tivity immediately after John, I greeted Charlie with a big hallo to prove I was only the passing stranger who knew nothing about anyone’s private life. ‘Dust keeping you hard at it?’

  ‘Temporarily. I’m sure the patients are doing the same for you. Don’t let me keep you.’

  It was as clear a brush-off as it was a total reversal of his former amiable attitude towards me. He looked so tight-lipped and tense that twang him and he’d sound a high C. He worried me in the way my patients worried me and made me feel very guilty over the unintentional brush-offs I had probably given casual acquaintances at his present stage. Close friends I had avoided intentionally, having found the patronizing element in pity intolerable, and compassion even more disturbing. The ability of the compassionate to share my feelings having added guilt for upsetting them to my share. That immediate reaction had not lasted long, but while it lasted it had been like swimming under water and not daring to surface, as surfacing meant opening my eyes and seeing my world for what it really was.

  Archie was maintaining his improvement and Meggy was back from hospital, slightly pale and very pleased with herself. ‘I was that sick, Nurrrsie! I was sick on my wee cot, and the nurrrse and the doctor, and he’d to change his fine white coat and his shirt, and then I was sick on the floor. I was bluidy sick, ye ken?’

  ‘I get the picture, Meggy. You liked the hospital?’

  ‘I liked it fine! I’d a jelly like a rabbit, all red and floppy, and an ice-cream and a jelly like a wee fish that was yellow but wasna floppy, and more ice-cream, and I wasna sick, not the once!’

  I had a new patient that afternoon in one of the newest housing estates. A neighbour directed me. ‘Mr Richards? Away over there, two down. Is he poorly with his chest again? It’ll be the dust. Aye, it’s terrible, the dust.’

  For a few seconds I looked round for signs of demolition. The small pinkish-yellow houses were in mint condition; the little gardens were less well cared for and lacked the passionately raised flowers found in English gardens on any comparable estate, but the grass was cut and as dust-free as the clean, salty air. Then I re-read the occupation on the new blue card in my hand. ‘I’ve heard dust is a problem in mines. Thank you, Mrs ‒’