nurse?”
“She’s partially trained.”
“She struck me as being pretty competent. She told me I wasn’t to talk, and above all that I wasn’t to ask any questions ” His eyes left her face and roved in a puzzled way round the room. “I don’t know why,” he confessed, “but I’ve got a sort of impression that this is a woman’s room. It’s very tidy at the moment, but I seem to see it littered with feminine things.” “My things.” She spoke very, very softly, close beside him, and although Hannah might not have approved she could not resist adding: “This was my room.”
The puzzled look in his eyes worried her. He was so plainly trying hard to remember, and the effort of trying to recapture something of his past life seemed to hurt him almost as much as actually turning his head on the pillow.
“Yours? Then why don’t you turn me out?” “Because I’m perfectly happy for you to be here… Because, as I tried to make you understand, you had an accident, and we put you to bed here.”
“But…? Why your room…?”
“You seemed to take a fancy to it.”
He frowned, shut his eyes tightly for rather a long moment, and then once again let them rove round the room.
“It’s a nice room, a very nice room. And I’ve a kind of impression the sea is outside – ”
“It is.”
“And I’ve been here before.”
“You have! ”
“When?” He looked directly up at her with very bright, clear eyes. “Tell me when! ”
“Oh, you’ve been here several times.”
He caught at her hand that was pressing lightly and coolly against his forehead, and he inhaled the perfume of her fingers with obvious pleasure.
“You smell nice,” he said. “Lavender and old lace… lavender and hem-stitched pillowcases! Did someone make lavender bags in this house long ago?”
“My aunt did.”
“And did I know your aunt?”
Hannah put her head round the door, then came in very purposefully and frowned reprovingly at Charlotte where she stood in close proximity to the patient in the bed.
“I hope you’re not worrying him, Charlotte,” she whispered. “There’s lots of time for him to find out where and who he is, and tonight is not one of them…” She frowned still more as she saw the overbright eyes gazing up into Charlotte’s face as if he felt that it contained a secret. “Please say good-night and leave us,” she added urgently.
Charlotte was filled with an extraordinary and quite unreasoning resentment as she found herself forced to leave the room and take up her station on the landing outside. She understood perfectly that Richard Tremarth, if not in an actually critical condition, was far from well, and as it was getting on for ten o’clock it was certainly far too late to be perplexing even a semi-invalid.
But she had felt that things were stirring in Tremarth’s mind as she stood with his hand grasping her wrist and his face pressed very close to her fingers, and if only Hannah hadn’t intervened… But then Hannah, of course, was a nurse, and she was acting on instructions from the local doctor. When she rejoined Charlotte on the landing she was looking quite cross with her.
“You really ought to have had more sense than to ask him a lot of questions,” she said. “A patient who has lost his memory gets it back gradually, and not as a result of having it jogged at a time when he ought to be asleep. I’ve given him the sedative Dr. Mackay left for him, and he should sleep peacefully throughout the night. But just in case he wakes and feels the urge to start wandering about the house as he did last night I’m going to sit with him through the night. You can wake me about six o’clock – if I should happen to doze off! ” with a certain amount of defensiveness – “with a nice cup of tea, and if everything’s all right you can sit with him for a few hours while I snatch a bit of rest. And then you can go off to Truro and do your shopping! ”
Charlotte was suddenly and very genuinely concerned for her friend.
“You’ll be worn out,” she protested.
Hannah denied that she would be anything of the kind.
“I’m tough,” she assured Charlotte. “And I’ve done this kind of thing before. But perhaps, if it’s necessary to sit with him to-morrow night, I’ll let you relieve me for a few of the darkest hours of the night. However, it’s quite possible that he’ll be very much better tomorrow.”
“I hope so,” Charlotte breathed, and Hannah looked mildly taken aback by her strange earnestness. “I really do hope so!”
CHAPTER V
CHARLOTTE quite enjoyed herself in Truro the following afternoon, spending money freely or as freely as she dared – and buying all sorts of dainties for her invalid at Tremarth. She would not normally have purchased hot- house grapes at the price she paid for them, but for Richard Tremarth they seemed a good idea. And so did avocado pears and peaches, a brace of partridges (out of season, of course, and therefore very expensive) some smoked salmon and a clutch of plover’s eggs. She didn’t know why she bought the plover’s eggs, except that they, too, seemed a good idea, and if Tremarth’s appetite was likely to be as elusive as his memory he would require tempting in order that his strength should be maintained.
Lastly, before she turned her car for home, she bought magazines and paperbacks, and then with the boot of the car loaded set off out of the car-park. The Cornish countryside that surrounds its somewhat dour capital – built upon granite over which the waves of the sea once washed, and therefore understandably a little detached and divorced from the encroachments of a modem world – is extremely attractive, and Charlotte certainly found it so as she drove along at a steady forty miles an hour, and felt for no easily understandable reason a desire to sing.
Flowers… she thought suddenly. She might have added to her expenditure, by buying some really wonderful hot-house flowers for the invalid’s room, but the reason she had hesitated was because there were so many sweetly scented ones in the garden at Tremarth. And nothing could really improve upon a bowl of roses. She would take the scissors when she got back and snip, snip, snip until she had enough to fill a charming and rather valuable silver bowl that stood on the hall table at Tremarth and carry it up to gladden the invalid’s eyes. She would place it on his dressing-table, where he could see it easily…
And she might place one or two choicer blooms in a glass beside his bed. If he was as bewildered as his dark eyes indicated the roses might give him comfort.
When she came in sight of Tremarth. after driving up over a cliff-top that was brilliantly green in the evening light, she could not prevent herself from feeling profound satisfaction as she viewed the pleasing outlines of her own house. It was such a very, very beautiful house in an even more beautiful setting, and the knowledge that it was hers affected her in much the same way as a warrior returning from a gruelling campaign that had taken him overseas to some very hostile lands might have felt when he returned to his ancestral castle.
It was not a castle, but it was considerably more useful, and it was home. It was her home! And what was more, she could keep it! She would keep it!
Waterloo, who had been disappointed earlier in the day because she had declined to take him with her in the car, came out and wagged his tail at the sight of her, and put his nose amongst the purchases in the boot. Hannah too emerged, and stood watching Charlotte unloading her somewhat strange collection of expensive greengrocery and other edibles, but made no attempt to assist her. She stood at the head of the flight of steps, wearing a crisp blue linen dress and a clean starched apron which she appeared to have included by accident amongst her luggage-they were left-overs from her hospital days – and looked extraordinarily efficient and charmingly wholesome with a slight application of lipstick and powder, which she usually disdained, but a little repressed, and even tight-lipped, which struck Charlotte as rather odd.
Handing up packages containing smoked salmon and Dover sole, which she had been unable to resist, and urging careful treatment of them, Charlotte enquired why she looked so grim. With a sudden surge of anxiety she
