Free Return to Tremarth by Susan Barrie

intention of returning to nursing, so it doesn’t worry me.”
    But Charlotte had already observed how eager she was to please Dr. Mackay, whose red hair positively quivered like a flaming torch in the morning sunlight that filled the sick-room, and she was quite sure she would blench most unhappily if he rebuked her. She smiled a little to herself, wondering why human beings went out of their way to deceive themselves.
    But they had a problem on their hands which prevented her thinking about very much else just then, and that was to ensure that the patient didn’t have a serious relapse as a result of being cared for by them. It was obvious Dr. Mackay thought Hannah was quite capable of taking charge of the nursing, but he did offer to send a night nurse along as soon as he could find one who was free.
    “It isn’t easy nowadays, however,” he explained, “and this is an out-of-the way place. In London it would be different, of course...
    He turned to the patient.
    “You’ve no objection to being looked after here by Miss Woodford and Miss Cootes?” he asked.
    Richard, who was still extremely drowsy and difficult to rouse, smiled faintly.
    “You’d better put the question to Miss Woodford and Miss Cootes,” he suggested. “They are the ones who are going to be bur-
    dened with me, and I should hardly think they want me here.”
    But Charlotte assured him earnestly that, since the doctor didn’t seem to think it would be a good thing to move him, they were quite in agreement that he should remain where he was.
    “In your bed?” he asked, looking straight up at her and proving, by the slight quirk at one comer of his mouth, that he was not actually suffering from amnesia, and he knew perfectly well what was going on around him.
    “There are lots of rooms in the house,” she replied, automatically smoothing the top of his sheet, “and I can choose another for myself.” “How long can I stay here?”
    “As long as it’s necessary.”
    He smiled in a curiously contented manner, and turned his face to the wall.
    “In that case I shall probably become a permanent invalid,” he murmured drowsily.
    For the remainder of that day he slept under the influence of the drugs that had been administered to him, and required little or no attention from his nurses. Hannah took up her station beside his bed, and arranged with Charlotte to have a sleep during the evening so that she could take over during the night, and she made it perfectly clear that Charlotte was to have little to do with the actual nursing of the patient, not so much because she was untrained but because the circumstances were slightly peculiar. After all, as she pointed out to her friend, Richard Tremarth was virtually a stranger to her... and the fact that she had known him when she was five years old didn’t add a touch of conventionality to her performing services for him that an unmarried girl wouldn’t normally perform for a little-known man of Tremarth’s years.
    “You mean wash him and that sort of thing?” Charlotte asked, and Hannah nodded.
    “It’s different for me,” she explained.
    Charlotte agreed ... and wondered afterwards what would have happened if Hannah had been without any sort of training and the same set of circumstances had occurred.
    When Tremarth really came to himself it was she, Charlotte, however, who was on hand to watch him frowning perplexedly round the room that was filled with the light of sunset. He lay listening for a few minutes to the monotonous surging of the sea, and for a while he watched the reflected light of the sea on the white-painted ceiling as if it fascinated him; and then he turned his dark head swiftly in Charlotte’s direction and asked her in quite a strong voice:
    “What time is it?”
    “It’s about half-past eight.”
    “In the evening?”
    “Yes.”
    His grey eyes were frankly puzzled as they gazed at her.
    “Why am I here? And where exactly am I?”
    “This is Tremarth ...