Healing in the Hills Read online

  There seemed no ready answer to this remark and Ismay continued eating in silence, though her appetite, she discovered, had fled. As if realizing that by this accusation he had hurt her more than he had intended Lewis suddenly launched into a tale about the medical conference he had been attending which he knew would appeal to her sense of the ridiculous, and in a few minutes he had Ismay laughing again.

  ‘I had to see a patient too, while I was there,’ he continued thoughtfully. ‘It may mean I have to go to Africa in a week or two to do an operation.’

  Ismay looked up, surprised. ‘Can’t the patient come to London?’

  ‘Well, I’m not at liberty to tell you his name, but he’s pretty high up in the government of one of the African states,’ Lewis said as he reached for another slice of bread and began to butter it slowly. ‘They aren’t keen for him to undergo surgery outside his own country, so I’ve more or less agreed to go out there and do the operation on the spot.’

  ‘Won’t that be a bit difficult? I shouldn’t have thought their hospitals were equipped for intricate eye jobs.’

  Lewis looked up surprised in his turn. ‘Oh, they’re pretty modern where I’ll be going, and in any case I shall take Dr. Naylor and my own theatre nurse with me.’ He paused for a moment and as Ismay made no remark he went on, ‘It’s a pity you haven’t done eyes yourself, Ismay. It would have been rather nice if you could have come as part of the team.’

  She looked up at his, surprised and rather taken off guard, to find him watching her rather soberly. She said hastily, ‘I’m not very fond of theatre work and I’m afraid I only did eight weeks in an eye ward. In any case,’ she went on as he opened his mouth to speak, ‘I don’t know how long I shall be needed here.’

  He nodded. ‘No, that’s a point. ‘I’m afraid I was looking at the matter from a purely personal angle.’

  The conversation was getting rapidly too involved for Ismay’s liking and swallowing a last mouthful she pushed her chair back hastily and getting up scraped her plate into the refuse bin beside the sink. She put her knife and fork down on the draining-board and busied herself with setting out the coffee cups.

  When she returned to the table with cheese and biscuits Lewis seemed to have dismissed the recent conversation from his mind, because he started to ask how everyone had been getting on during his absence. ‘Just as usual,’ Ismay smiled. ‘Anne and I have been sticking at the exercises and I really think the knee’s beginning to show a marked improvement at last. If she goes on like this the leg ought soon to be as good as new. Your brother is talking about renting a villa in the South of France and taking Felicity and the girls for a month out there.’

  ‘Perhaps he’ll want you to go with them,’ Lewis suggested.

  ‘Nothing’s been said so far and I’m not sure what I want to do when I leave here. I had a letter from a friend of mine the other day. She and her fiancé and brother are overlanding to India and they want me to go along as a fourth.’

  ‘When would that be?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Sandie didn’t give me a definite date. Probably near the end of August when the monsoon will be letting up a bit. They’re in the middle of making their arrangements at the moment. So I shall have to make up my mind soon because naturally they will want to ask someone else if I decide to turn them down. Sandie, my friend, is still nursing at St. Ninian’s, and she’ll have to put in for special leave of absence. It’ll take some tying up. I don’t suppose Matron will be very pleased,’ and Ismay pulled a comical face before adding, ‘Nice though Miss Fellows can be, she doesn’t like losing good nurses.’

  ‘And do you want to go to India?’ Lewis asked curiously.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Ismay played around with a small piece of cheese before putting it on to a biscuit and carrying it halfway to her mouth. ‘I’ve always wanted to see India, but I’m not sure if this is the right time. In fact,’ and she looked up straight into Lewis’s watchful eyes, ‘I’m not sure of anything at the moment,’ and then she flushed as she realized how illogical this must sound to him.

  But if he thought that she was showing every indication of typical feminine indecision he gave no sign of it, merely remarking as he pushed back his chair, ‘It will certainly take a bit of thinking out.’

  He got up to fetch the percolator and coming over to the table poured coffee into both cups. As he stirred sugar into his own he glanced out of the window. ‘It’s a beautiful evening. Much too nice to stay indoors. What do you say we clear up quickly and go for a walk? I don’t suppose the family will be back before dark and we’ve got at least an hour and a half’s good daylight left. Come on, drink your coffee quickly, there’s a good girl, and get your anorak. It may be chilly when we get up to the top of the hill. You do want to go up and not down by the lake, don’t you?’

  ‘Oh yes, please,’ Ismay assured him. ‘We have to walk by the lake most of the time. It’s flatter down there and easier for Anne’s leg. I haven’t had a chance to do any hill climbing. Not that I’m good at it,’ she added hastily. ‘Half a mile and I shall probably be gasping for breath.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Lewis said as he rose and began to gather the plates. ‘I won’t let you overdo it. Now I must get out of these city clothes and into something more comfortable. I’ll be with you in a few minutes. Don’t keep me waiting.’

  Ismay nodded eagerly as she gathered up the dishes and cleared away the uneaten food. By the time she ran downstairs again in jeans and sweater, carrying a light waterproof anorak over her arm, Lewis was already standing in the hallway and he nodded approvingly as he glanced over her attire.

  ‘I should put that on before we leave,’ he advised her, indicating the anorak. ‘The evening wind’s quite chilly tonight,’ and he shrugged into a thick oiled-wool sweater as Ismay obediently slipped her arms into her anorak and zipped up the front.

  They were silent for the first few minutes after leaving the house. Instead of turning down the drive Lewis led the way up the garden and helped Ismay to climb over the dry stone wall which marked the boundary of the gardens of Little Grange. From then on there was a fairly gradual slope upwards towards the small hill which overlooked the house and before they were half-way up Ismay could feel her breath beginning to come more quickly.

  She stopped for a moment with a hand on her diaphragm and took two or three long slow breaths before continuing in Lewis’s wake. He had walked slowly ahead, keeping an even pace, and apart from a helping hand when they had reached the wall, he had made no attempt to touch her, his fingers letting go of her arm immediately he saw that she had her feet firmly on the ground on the opposite side of the wall.

  Ismay’s thoughts were on his punctilious behaviour as she padded along behind him. The bracken was beginning to thin out and give way to solitary clumps of heather and ling as they got on to higher ground. Boulders showed here and there through the thin turf, though there was still plenty of pasture for the mountain sheep scattered at random on the hill and who lifted their heads to stop chewing for a moment as the couple went by.

  On the way Lewis had taken out his pipe and now he stopped, filled it and lit up, glancing around him and then finally at Ismay’s flushed face.

  His eyes were twinkling as he remarked, ‘Well, this has certainly put a glow into your cheeks! I wish all the patients I see looked as healthy as you. Quite often I have to delay my operations until I’ve built them up physically.’

  ‘What, even for eyes?’

  ‘Even for eyes,’ Lewis echoed her. ‘You’d be surprised how debilitated some of the older people let themselves get. I think they lose interest in looking after themselves.’

  Ismay nodded. She had noticed this herself when she had been on the geriatric ward. Some of the old age pensioners came in, if not actually suffering from malnutrition, at least on the border-line, through having skimped meals or not having, she suspected, sufficient money to buy the right kind of food. It seemed that even in his branch of medicine Lewis came upon thi
s kind of patient, and Ismay wished she knew a little more about the treatment of ophthalmic diseases.

  As she followed in his footsteps, she racked her brains for all the information she had picked up during her training. It would have been nice if she could have talked to him confidently on his particular subject, like Doctor Naylor, for instance. Yes, like Doctor Naylor. Ismay’s thoughts switched to the pretty fair-haired girl whom she had seen for a brief moment last week. Lewis had said earlier that he intended taking her with him if he went to Africa to perform the proposed operation. Was there the beginning of an understanding between them? If so it must be in its early stages, because during Ismay’s stay at Little Grange, Doctor Naylor had never been invited there as a guest, and surely Lewis, if he had any serious intentions, would have brought her home at the first available opportunity to meet his mother.

  Why can’t I live for the moment? Ismay thought, as they reached the top and she stood beside Lewis gazing out at the delightful panorama spread at her feet. Little Grange looked like a doll’s house below them, and beyond it she could see the gleam of Derwentwater. The trees were a multitude of greens from the dark of the firs to the palest silver birch. Ismay drew a deep breath. This could be heaven if only she and Lewis were in complete harmony. Instead of feeling contented just to be with him she was wasting this perfect evening indulging in conjectures about his love-life and blaming herself for not discovering earlier that he was free and unattached. She had had her chance and thrown it away, killing the interest she had seen so clearly in his eyes.

  She could not resist a glance upwards at his face, but Lewis seemed unaware of her presence, gazing out in the direction in which she herself had been looking a few minutes earlier, the smoke from his pipe rising above his head only to be blown away by the wind, which as he had predicted was blowing quite strongly now. As if some at least of her uneasiness of mind had reached him he suddenly seemed to bring himself back from some far place, and turning his head, he glanced down and met Ismay’s eyes.

  Once again his hazel eyes began to twinkle as he removed the pipe from his mouth. ‘I’d give a great deal to be able to read your mind. You seem at the moment such a mass of complexes and indecisions that no man in his right mind would make any attempt to hazard a guess at what was going through that pretty little head of yours. I should have thought, on an evening like this, with a beautiful view spread out in front of you, you’d have looked contented. But you don’t, you merely look anxious. Now come on. What’s troubling you? Get it off your chest, you’ll feel much better afterwards. Not losing sleep, I hope, about whether you should go on this expedition to India or not, surely?’

  Ismay sighed and turned away. ‘Not really. But I can’t help wishing that Sandie had never made the suggestion to me in the first place. At the moment it’s just one thing more to cope with, and I was rather enjoying being in Limbo up here.’

  One of Lewis’s eyebrows raised itself a good deal higher than the other and he looked mildly astonished. ‘In Limbo? Up here?’ He sounded hurt, as if she had personally insulted him.

  Ismay flushed slightly. ‘That sounded tactless; forgive me. Please don’t think I regard life up here as humdrum, because I don’t. I told you, it’s been a haven of peace, a very welcome change from what I was having to cope with at home. All that solicitude, and when I didn’t deserve it too.’

  ‘Well, I shouldn’t feel guilty about that, and I shouldn’t trouble your head about making decisions right at this minute. It won’t be the end of the world if your friend goes off to India without you, surely? I imagine there’ll be other opportunities. Really, Ismay,’ and he turned his head and looked down at her once more, ‘you call this a blessed Limbo, but what with boy-friends and trips to India you’re rapidly getting yourself in yet another tangle, aren’t you?’

  Ismay smiled faintly. ‘Am I? Perhaps I’m “tangle”-prone. Like people are accident-prone—you know.’

  Lewis did not answer this last remark. ‘I think,’ he glanced at his watch, ‘we’d better start back. I don’t want to have to hurry home, but it will be getting dark soon and if Mother finds the house empty she’ll immediately begin to worry where you are. Come along, we’d better make tracks.’ And without waiting for a reply he turned once more and led the way.

  If only you knew, Ismay thought as she followed him. If only you knew that the unhappy expression which you noticed on my face was entirely due, not to boy-friends, or to deciding whether I’ll go with Sandie or not, but merely because I’ve been fool enough to fall in love with the wrong man a second time, and she looked longingly at the broad shoulders two yards in front of her. How perfect it would have been, if back on that hill-top he had put an arm around her as Roy Young had done the other evening. But Roy’s arm was the wrong arm. The one that would really give her the utmost contentment was rigidly withheld.

  He treats me almost like a sister, Ismay thought to herself angrily as she followed Lewis down the path. She was determined this time that she would refuse his hand if he attempted to help her over the wall, but even her noble intentions were thwarted. As she said blithely, ‘It’s all right, I can manage. Don’t bother,’ and scrambled up on to the wall, she caught her foot on the topmost stone and would have fallen headlong if Lewis had not stepped forward quickly and caught her as she fell.

  She landed hard against his chest and as he in his turn stumbled under her weight the pair of them went down, Ismay still clasped firmly in Lewis’s arms. For a second there was stunned silence while Lewis tried to get his wind back, and Ismay lay gazing speechlessly into eyes not three inches from her own. Then as the breath came back into his lungs Lewis let out a whoop and began to laugh. But he made no attempt to let go of her and get to his feet. He lay on the rough grass and clasped her even closer.

  ‘You do get yourself in involved situations, don’t you? Now why did you have to try and be so independent just now? Look where it’s landed you.’ And then, as irresistibly Ismay began to smile in return, he reached up one hand, placed it on the back of her head and pulled her face closer to his own. ‘I think I deserve an award for playing the hero and saving you from a nasty bump,’ he said, and he pressed his lips to hers.

  For a second Ismay was rigid, and then she took hold of his shoulders and kissed him eagerly in return. The kiss lasted only for a moment or two and then Lewis very gently put a hand on either side of her face and held it away from his own. ‘Sorry, my dear, but no red-blooded man could resist such temptation. Now how about us getting up and going home? You’re not such a featherweight as you look.’

  Hastily, Ismay scrambled up and in a second Lewis was standing beside her, brushing pieces of broken bracken off the back of his trousers and looking around for his pipe. ‘I hope you’re a little more circumspect when you’re out in charge of my two nieces,’ he remarked as he picked it up and they turned to walk down to the house together, ‘because if not, I can see Anne getting another broken knee. Perhaps you only fling yourself about in abandoned attitudes,’ he went on, and turned to glance down at her.

  He was certainly taking his revenge, Ismay thought to herself, and she made no reply, merely hurrying ahead of him towards the house. As they walked down the corridor towards the hall he said lazily from behind her, ‘I wouldn’t say “no” to another cup of coffee. How about you?’

  Eager to get away from him, Ismay volunteered to make it, and he strolled on towards the drawing-room. When she reached there ten minutes later with a loaded tray the television was playing and by the glow from the standard lamp, which was the only light switched on, Ismay could see Lewis’s head above the high back of the settee. She walked round to put the tray down on the coffee table and had opened her mouth to say, ‘None of the family seem to have returned,’ when she noticed he was fast asleep.

  As he sat propped in one corner of the settee his head had fallen back, and already the pipe, which he must have taken out of his mouth, was beginning to slip through his lax fingers. Hastily Ismay b
ent down and caught it before it hit the floor. The bowl was still warm, so he must have been smoking it a moment or two ago, and she laid it down gently on the ashtray. She sat down quietly on the other end of the settee and began to pour herself a cup of coffee, turning to watch Lewis as she did so. He must have been very tired, she now realized, after a long day in London, and then the journey back. And yet up on the hill he had not appeared so. Perhaps the warmth of the house after the exhilarating walk had made him drowsy, and he had dropped off almost without realizing it. At least it gave her the opportunity to study him without fear of giving herself away and she was indulging herself by admiring his thick lashes and the shape of his strong hands when she heard the sounds of arrival and the door was flung abruptly open as Clare and Anne came into the room.

  They were followed by Alec and Felicity, and the latter said in her light brittle tones, ‘Oh, we do look cosy, don’t we?’ as she came round the settee.

  Lewis opened his eyes and gazed without speaking for a few moments at his sister-in-law’s face before getting to his feet. He seemed about to make some remark, but Felicity went on without a second’s hesitation, ‘I’m sorry to break up the téte-a-téte,’ and her smile in itself made Ismay writhe inwardly, ‘but it’s been a long day and the sooner the girls are in bed the better. Perhaps you’ll take them up right away?’

  It was a question, a command and a dismissal all at the same time, but Ismay managed to appear composed as she put down her coffee cup. ‘I’ll take them up at once,’ she said, and after quietly telling the girls to say good night to Lewis and their parents, she led the way out of the room.

  When the girls were settled Ismay did not return to the drawing-room, but went into her own bedroom and firmly shut the door. Without putting on the light she walked over to the window, her favourite viewpoint, and sat down in the armchair to look out at the moonlit garden and think over the events of the evening.