Strangers When We Meet E-Book

Vivian Stuart

• Herausgeber: Jentas Ehf
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

INTRIGUE. TENSION. LOVE AFFAIRS: In The Historical Romance series, a set of stand-alone novels, Vivian Stuart builds her compelling narratives around the dramatic lives of sea captains, nurses, surgeons, and members of the aristocracy. Stuart takes us back to the societies of the 20th century, drawing on her own experience of places across Australia, India, East Asia, and the Middle East.    Doctor Sarah Hamilton had come to the little mid-west town of Granville to take over as locum to one of its best-loved doctors. But there were two strangers in Granville, one an ex-patient of Sarah's, the other a deranged and dangerous man. Were they, in fact, one and the same man? Was Sarah right to trust and believe in Steve Gresham, with his tragic past and uncertain future? And could she hold on to her professional loyalties where he was concerned?

Leseprobe

Strangers When We Meet

Strangers When We Met

© Vivian Stuart, 1968

© eBook in English: Jentas ehf. 2022

ISBN: 978-9979-64-483-5

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchase.

All contracts and agreements regarding the work, editing, and layout are owned by Jentas ehf.

____

For my daughter, Vary Stuart, who has read all my books and acted as the critic of whom I take most notice, in the hope that she will enjoy this one more than the others which went before it . . . since, indirectly, she suggested the plot.

Prologue

“WELL, I . . . thanks, Doctor.” The thanks were mechanical, offered without conviction, and the patient rose, hesitated and then, with a mumbled, “I guess I’ll wait and see Dr. Burger when he gets back,” he moved towards the door. He was a small, greyhaired man, clearly disturbed and in need of help to enable him to face the problems—real or imagined—which beset him. His fear of them certainly wasn’t imagined and, from behind her desk, Dr. Sarah Hamilton’s eyes were troubled as she watched the door close on his retreating back.

His was the last name on her list of out-patients, but, unhappily aware that she had failed to give him the skilled professional reassurance he had sought from her, she read through his notes again, hoping to find in these the vital clue which had eluded her. The usual information was all there; his name, Henry D. Franks, his age, address, some details of his marriage and previous medical history, but although she had asked all the right questions, he hadn’t—as her American colleagues were wont to say—“levelled with her.” He had joked about his name, admitting that he was known as Hank Frank to his workmates, but the joke was an old one, which he no longer found amusing, and he had simply trotted it out in a defensive, unsmiling way in order, presumably, to gain time while he took her measure.

And—Sarah’s lips tightened wryly— having taken her measure, he had found her wanting and unworthy of his confidence, so that she had no more idea now of the precise nature of the problems which had led him to seek her aid than she had had when he had first come in. Hank Frank had talked, he had talked for over half an hour and told her nothing, yet . . . she stifled a sigh, in which weariness was mingled with frustration. Yet tomorrow or the day after, when Gene Burger took the out-patients’ clinic, he would undoubtedly pour out his story to her Chief Resident with humiliating eagerness, and her own, virtually useless, case notes would be clipped to the back of his file and never referred to again. She knew, because it had all happened before and much too often to be just by chance, so that it was high time she took stock of the situation and decided what she must do. The decision was simple enough, in all conscience. She must either stay or admit defeat and go to the little Mid-Western country town of Granville, as Gene had advised.

Feeling in the pocket of her white hospital coat, Sarah took out the letter, which she had received only that morning and studied the postmark on the envelope, frowning. She had completed the first six months of her year’s research fellowship, the winning of which—together with the Merton Gold Medal—had, it seemed, set the seal of success on her professional career. Indeed, at the time, it had come as the realisation of a dream, an improbable but wildly exciting dream, for which she had worked like a slave, without really believing in her own ability to make it come true. A year in America, the chance to study at one of the most advanced hospitals in the world, with the prospect of a Ph.D. at the end of it . . . why, it had been the answer to prayer!

She had worked for six months in this vast, magnificently equipped university hospital, as a junior resident in the Department of Psychological Medicine, under the inspired guidance of the great Professor Karl Friedlander, whose name in the field of psychiatry was a household word, even in England, and yet what had she made of the longed-for opportunity? How many other failures had she had? It wasn’t just Hank Frank, seen for the first and only time at an out-patients’ clinic. There had been others, admission cases, placed under her care for weeks or months on end, whose confidence she hadn’t been able to win—women, as well as men, so that she couldn’t blame her sex for her failure.

What, then, was to blame? Honest with herself always, Sarah’s frown deepened. Was Gene Burger right when he had told her that the basic trouble was the fact that she was British—too darned British—and that this raised an insuperable barrier between her patients and herself?

“Oh, sure, you’re well trained and well qualified—you know your job better than most, Sarah my child,” he had said, with the kindly, almost fatherly honesty that was characteristic of him. “And I guess you earned that gold medal of yours. I’d trust myself unhesitatingly to your care, if I suddenly started to develop complicated psychotic tendencies, and the Professor wasn’t around. But that’s because I know you, know what you’re worth and because I’ve worked with you. I’m not put off by the—oh, heck, I don’t know how to describe it, without offending you!”

“But I want you to tell me the truth,” she had begged, Sarah remembered. “I shan’t be offended, I give you my word. We both know that I’m not doing any good here or getting the results I ought to be getting. I’m always having to call you in, and it worries me.”

“You’re doing some great work on that thesis of yours,” he had pointed out.

“But not with my patients. Gene, I must know why and I wish you’d tell me. Please—I’d honestly be grateful if you would.”

“You mean that?”

“Yes.” Sarah flushed, as she recalled the vehemence with which she had voiced her questions, citing cases, giving him chapter and verse. “It’s a breakdown in communication, isn’t it? My patients have no faith in me, and I—I can’t seem to get through to them, however hard I try. Why, Gene?”

“Well, you’re too darned British,” Dr. Burger had answered at last, and grinned down at her good-humouredly. “You haven’t learnt to speak our language or to understand it properly yet. And you don’t have to remind me that we share a common language, which originated in England, because I’m well aware of that. But the way you speak it, the—why, the air of superiority your accent gives you puts some of the patients off. Not all, just some. That and your manner. They’re in awe of you, they’ve never met anyone quite like you before and—”

“In awe of me?” Sarah had interrupted, in stunned bewilderment, and Gene Burger had laughed, she remembered, eyeing her from head to toe with flattering masculine approval, so that she had been unable to resent his laughter.

“Apart from my wife,” he had assured her, still smiling but his tone quite serious, “you’re easily the best-looking girl I’ve seen in years—all five foot two of you, Dr. Hamilton! Yet the fact remains that, for the type of patients we mostly treat here, you’re a dazzling, unapproachable vision of good British breeding. The men like to look at you, I’ve seen them, but to them you’re not quite real. You’re a mile over their heads—they don’t know what makes you tick, so they figure that you don’t know what makes them tick either, and therefore they can’t talk to you.”

“And the women?” she had pursued. “They don’t talk to me either. Or hadn’t you noticed?”

“You do a lot better with the women, Sarah—and best of all with the children. That coloured child we had in Female J, remember? What was her name—Polly Dean, wasn’t it? The one none of us could handle . . .” the Chief Resident went into clinical details, but again Sarah had cut him short. She said, with bitterness, “One case, out of so many! What about all the others?”

“Well, it’s early days yet, Sarah. Give yourself time. You—”

“I’ve already given myself half the time I’ve got,” she had reminded him. “Gene, I don’t want an empty honours degree which is all theory. I don’t want to be haunted for the rest of my life with a—a sense of failure, because I couldn’t communicate with my fellow human beings. Sick human beings, who needed my help! What sort of a psychiatrist would that make me?”

“Psychiatry isn’t an exact science, my child. And I’m sure you were able to communicate with your British patients without any trouble, weren’t you?”

“Yes,” she had conceded unwillingly. “But—”

“These are American human beings,” Gene had stated. “What do you know of the American way of life? You come straight out from England, spend six months in the cloistered, rarefied atmosphere of this hospital . . . why, I’d lay odds you haven’t entered an American household, apart from mine and Friedlander’s and the Dean’s. Have you?”

She had been compelled to shake her head, and Gene Burger had laid a friendly hand on her shoulder. “Mine’s a madhouse, with the kids; the Professor’s is straight out of a Germany that doesn’t exist any more and the Dean’s is”—he grinned boyishly—“as cloistered and rarefied as this place. Have you visited anybody else’s home?”

“No, I—that is, I—”

“You stayed in your room, working on that thesis!” The Chief Resident had accused triumphantly, and when she hadn’t denied it, his fingers had tightened about her shoulders, Sarah remembered and, his gaze very direct and searching, he had gone on, “Yet it wasn’t for lack of invitations, was it? We all asked you to take a meal with us, to drop in for a drink, come to a movie. And you could have dated just about every red-blooded male member of the staff of this hospital, married and single, couldn’t you . . . if you hadn’t made it abundantly clear that you weren’t interested! Why aren’t you, anyway? Is there some guy back home you’re still carrying a torch for, Sarah?”

The memory of that last question, which had taken her by surprise, caused her cheeks, even now, to burn hotly. She hadn’t told him about John Addison, though; she had simply nodded and then, because she liked Gene and genuinely needed his advice, had added, “There was, yes, but it’s over and I—I haven’t any desire to let myself become involved again. In any case, I came here to work. Isn’t that what research fellowships are supposed to be for and why they’re awarded?”

“Oh, sure. But you know what they say about all work and no play, don’t you?”

“Yes, of course. Only I—”

His eyes had continued to search her face, gravely but kindly. “You say you don’t want to become involved again?”

“I don’t. Especially not in—oh, in a meaningless sort of relationship, based on nothing more than physical attraction, of the kind that flourishes here among the staff and between residents and nurses. You’re surely not suggesting that, are you?” She had sounded very British and superior, Sarah knew, but Gene Burger, if he noticed, had ignored this.

“I’m not in favour of promiscuity myself,” he had informed her mildly. “On the other hand I don’t expect my staff to act like monks and nuns. In our particular field of medical endeavour the human touch—human understanding, if you like—is all-important and can only be fostered by human contact. I don’t have to explain all that to one of your intelligence, but you did ask for the truth, didn’t you?” When she had inclined her head, he had smiled at her. “Then how can you hope to understand a sick mind, if you don’t know how a healthy mind reacts—a healthy American mind, Sarah, not a British one! You can’t cut yourself off from life and from living—and certainly not from loving and being loved, at your age, my dear, however badly you may have been hurt—without losing the human touch. And lacking that, how do you expect to communicate with any of your fellow beings, least of all the ones who live on this side of the Atlantic? But you have cut yourself off for the past six months, you have to admit . . . with the result that you’re just as British as you were the day you got here. Like I said, that’s too darned British to inspire confidence in American psychiatric patients, so you find a barrier between yourself and them. A breakdown in communication, a . . .” he had gone into technicalities and ended, his smile very much in evidence and kinder than ever, “They’ve given you a nickname here, you know.”

“Who . . . the patients or the staff?”

“Oh, the staff. We’ve all got one. Mine is ‘Father Burger.’”

“And mine?” Sarah’s mouth had been stiff. “I suppose it’s uncomplimentary.”

“No, not entirely. They call you ‘The Duchess’, which implies . . . well, a certain degree of respect, don’t you agree.”

“No, I do not!” She had been resentful, Sarah thought, in spite of her promise, even a little offended. The truth hurt, yet she knew in her heart it was the truth and she had asked for it, not once but twice. Gene Burger had given it to her, as gently as he could, and then, sensing her hurt, he had started to apologise.

“Sarah, you’ll submit a darned good thesis. Your technical approach is just fine, your reading a whole lot more comprehensive and certainly more up to date than mine. You came here to work for your Ph.D., and you’ll get it, have no fear of that. So don’t give another thought to what I’ve said, if you don’t want to—I’d never have brought it up, if you hadn’t. I’ll speak to the Professor if you like, suggest that he assign you to work on your project under Dr. Nolan, who’s a research man, pure and simple, and—”

“And relieve me of my ward duties, my beds?” Sarah had asked, having to make an effort to control her voice. The prospect of becoming a mere spectator, a statistician like Dr. Nolan, appalled her. “Am I as— as bad as all that?”

“Don’t let Nolan hear you!” Gene Burger had exclaimed, in mock alarm. “It takes all sorts to make a world and all kinds of doctors to run a hospital like this. I just thought you might prefer a change, that you—”

“I shouldn’t, I—please, Gene, what can I do to break down the barriers, to . . . to learn to speak your language?”

“Ah . . .” he had hesitated, thick, dark brows knit in a pensive frown and, as she waited for his answer, she had been conscious of a deep sense of shame, Sarah reminded herself. Shame and humiliation but suddenly no bitterness, because she had deserved this, she recognised, had needed to be pulled up with a jolt. Finally Gene’s brow had cleared. “It’s going to have to be a kind of a crash course, isn’t it, if you’ve only got another six months? Well, if it was me, I’d plunge right in, I guess. I’d go where I was forced to mix with people, for a couple of those months, anyway. I’d . . . yes, I’ve got it! I’d take on a GP’s locum tenens in some country district, where everyone knows everybody else and the doctor’s a part of the community.”

“But how could I do anything of the kind?” She had stared at him in blank, astonished dismay. “I’m supposed to be a psychiatrist and my fellowship—”

“You’re qualified to practise medicine, you’ve gotten your State Board registration, and you surely did a general medical training in London, before you decided to specialise, didn’t you? You must have covered obstetrics and gynaecology as an intern and worked on the general medical and surgical wards?”

“Yes, of course. But—”

“Then there’s nothing to it,” Gene Burger had asserted cheerfully. “All we have to do is find you a suitable practice. I’ll talk with the Prof. about it and I reckon he’ll come up with an answer—he usually does.”

The Professor had, indeed, come up with an answer, Sarah reflected ruefully, and he had wasted no time. A friend and one-time colleague of his, Dr. John Mason, now in his late fifties, had a practice in the little town of Granville—which supported two doctors—and was in immediate need of a locum tenens, to enable him to enter hospital for urgent surgical treatment, already too long postponed. The locum was Sarah’s, if she wanted it, for approximately two months, provided that she could take over the practice at once. The letter gave her most of the details she would require to know concerning the practice, and she started to take the two closely written sheets of paper from their envelope, her fingers not quite steady.

Domestic matters were in the hands of a competent housekeeper; Dr. Mason was a widower, but he occupied a comfortable house in the centre of town, with an office attached, and a car would of course be provided. The practice covered a fairly large rural area and responsibilities would include those of school medical officer and police surgeon. Neither, Dr. Mason’s letter stated, was unduly arduous, as such appointments went, and except for maternity cases and an occasional visit to some of his older patients when admitted, he had given up his work at the small local hospital. His colleague, Dr. Harvey L. Bayliss, and an intern took care of the hospital, and the former would jump at the chance to relieve her of the police surgeon’s appointment, if she wished to relinquish this.

“There is not much serious crime here,” the letter concluded. “We have a most efficient Police Chief from the city, by the name of Hennessy, who seldom disturbs my sleep. This is about all I can tell you, and I should be grateful if you would either call me or telegraph within the next twenty-four hours if you are willing to come here, on the terms I have outlined overleaf . . . I should like a week with you here, before I enter hospital on the 17th.”

The terms were generous and the only rival for the locum a recently qualified intern from the Granville District Hospital, who had been “helping out” since Dr. Mason’s illness, but . . . Sarah stared down at the letter in an agony of indecision. The Professor had not insisted on her taking Gene Burger’s advice; he had left the decision entirely up to her and had told her, in the guttural, still faintly accented voice which, despite his many years in the States, remained as betrayal of his ancestry, that it took some people a lifetime before they ceased to feel strangers in a strange land.

“I understand how it is with you,” he had volunteered, “since I, too, once had a nickname I did not like or, indeed, consider that I deserved. They used to call me ‘The Kraut’—by comparison with which to be known as ‘Duchess’ in infinately to be preferred. They call me ‘The Prof’ now, disrespectfully but with affection, so that at last I feel I am one of them. Americans may be racially mixed, Dr. Hamilton, yet they are suspicious of strangers, as you’ve already learnt and will learn again, if you go to Granville. There, however, you would be starting with an advantage which is not possible here. You’d be judged as an individual and vouched for by a man who is respected and loved. Dr. Mason”—his lips curved into a smile of singular warmth—“is known to the whole of Granville as ‘Doctor John.’ And that is better even than being called ‘The Prof,’ do you not agree?”

“I’m not sure, sir,” Sarah had confessed. “Perhaps that will make it harder for me to try to take his place.”

“That is possible. Eventually, of course, you will be assessed on your own merits.” The shrewd old eyes met hers, a question in them. “Understand, Dr. Hamilton, I can find another locum—I am not telling you to go, nor am I urging you to remain here. The decision is yours, though I should, in fairness, warn you that you may jeopardise your degree if you leave. In a general practice you will have far less time for study and, in the evenings, you may be too tired to continue work on your thesis or even to read for it. However, you will still have four months of your fellowship left and I have a high respect for your intelligence and capacity for hard work. It should be possible for you to make up the time lost in Granville when you return here and you might well find that very little time was lost, when you came to make the final assessment. Any experience is of value and, in our field, can be of particular value when balanced against theoretical knowledge, nicht wahr?”

“Then”—Sarah had seized eagerly upon his last words—“would you advise me to go, Professor?”

To her chagrin, Professor Friedlander shrugged his thin, bowed shoulders. “I cannot advise you, my dear young lady. All the members of our profession are tempted to experiment. It is a temptation to which pyschiatrists are especially susceptible—they long to fit human beings into theoretical concepts of what is best for them, to suggest, to advise or, put another way, to play God with other people’s lives. Few of us are immune to this temptation, including Dr. Burger, but I am an old man and I try to resist it. So I am not going to attempt to influence you. Much depends on the sort of doctor you wish, eventually, to become, and only you can know what that is. You have a good brain, a sense of high dedication and you are fortunately very talented. This hospital is a forcing ground for talent. We can send you back to England with some impressive letters after your name, or we can take a chance on these and send you back with something less tangible but, perhaps, of more practical use in the long run. Which it is to be only you can decide. Perhaps you will let me know your decision, when you have thought the matter over?”

Sarah laid down the letter, expelling her breath in a long-drawn sigh. She had been thinking the matter over, at intervals, all day. Half a dozen times, between patients, she had put out a hand to lift the telephone receiver on the desk at her side, only to withdraw it, still not quite certain. Now the clinic was over and she had to decide; Dr. Mason would be waiting for her to call him. He was himself due to enter hospital in a week and although, no doubt, his temporary locum could carry on, he . . . there was a tentative tap on the door.

“Oh, Doctor!” Miss Jefferson, the Head Nurse from Reception, peered in, her eyes widening in surprise when she realised that the office was still occupied. “I figured you must have gone to the canteen for a meal, when I saw the waiting room was empty.” She sounded unexpectedly pleased, and Sarah rose to her feet at once.

“What can I do for you, Miss Jefferson? Or do you need the office? Because I’ve finished, apart from a phone call I must make.”

The nurse smilingly shook her head. “No, it was you I was looking for, Dr. Hamilton. We’re finally discharging Captain Gresham today and he’s asked to see you before he goes. You remember him, don’t you? The Atlantic Airways pilot who was in that bad crash . . .” she outlined the case history, with brisk competence, but Sarah needed no reminders. Captain Stephen Gresham had been a surgical case to whom she had been called in an advisory capacity when he was found to be suffering from traumatic amnesia and she regarded him as, perhaps, her worst and most distressing failure.

She had wanted so much to help him to regain his lost memory, aware that he would have to face an enquiry into the cause of the crash, upon the findings of which his whole future as an airline pilot would depend. But she had achieved nothing, with the result that Steve Gresham had lost his job. On the evidence available, the enquiry had returned a verdict of “pilot error” and a medical board, held shortly afterwards, had declared him unfit for flying duties. He had returned to the hospital for a series of facial skin grafts, still suffering from severe headaches and in a state of acute depression, for the treatment of which the advice of the Department of Psychological Medicine had again been sought by the surgeons.

And . . . Sarah felt the hot, unhappy colour rising to flood her cheeks. As ill luck would have it, she had been the resident on call and Captain Stephen Gresham—or ex-Captain Stephen Gresham, as he was by then—had refused even to allow her to examine him. Gene Burger had taken over the case, roused from sleep to do so, and she had not seen the one-time pilot again, although she had followed his progress, reported at the monthly case history discussions, and knew that he had shown considerable improvement. Now he was being discharged and, according to Miss Jefferson, had asked to see her before leaving. Why, she asked herself wretchedly, what possible reason could have prompted his request? As suddenly as it had come, the colour drained from her cheeks and she turned to face Miss Jefferson, forcing an uneasy smile.

“Are you sure he asked for me, not Dr. Burger?”

“I’m quite sure,” Miss Jefferson returned tartly. “He said Dr. Burger visited him yesterday, on his round.”

“Oh, well, I’d better see him, I suppose. You don’t know what he wants, do you?”

“He didn’t tell me, Doctor, and I didn’t enquire. It could be that he wants to thank you, couldn’t it?” There was no hint of sarcasm in the Head Nurse’s tone, which was brisk and a trifle impatient. She glanced at her watch and added pointedly, “Why not ask him yourself I’ll bring him in and, if you’ve no objection, I’ll leave him with you. My desk is piled a mile high with admission and discharge cards and I’d like to get through on time for once—I’m going to a movie. I had the switchboard call a cab for Captain Gresham and his suitcase is in the foyer, the porters will take care of it.”

With a reluctance she could not hide, Sarah gave her assent, and a moment later, the door opened once more to admit her one-time patient. She had never seen him out of bed before and, indeed, had never seen his face and head free of bandages, so that both his height and his good looks came as something of a surprise to her. Only a small scar on his right cheekbone remained to show where the skin grafts had been made; the surgeons, her mind registered, had done a remarkably fine job on Steve Gresham, and she found herself hoping that Dr. Burger had been equally successful in treating his depression and the agonising headaches which had accompanied it. Again forcing a smile, she motioned him to a chair, but he shook his dark head.

“No, thanks, Dr. Hamilton. I won’t take up more than a few minutes of your time. It was just that I—well, I felt I couldn’t leave here without offering you an apology. My attitude wasn’t rational at the time or I wouldn’t have acted as I did to you, because you’d been very good to me. More than good, you went out of your way to try to help me. I wanted you to know that I’m grateful now.”

Sarah did not pretend to misunderstand him. “That’s perfectly all right, Captain Gresham. You needn’t apologise or be grateful, honestly. You—”

“I owe you an apology,” he insisted. “And it’s Mister, not Captain now, if you wouldn’t mind. I have to get used to it myself. Might as well start the way I mean to go on.”

He no longer sounded bitter, Sarah thought, but he did not look well. The intelligent grey eyes held pain and there were lines about the mouth, indelibly etched there. His manner was easy and relaxed, however and, she was relieved to observe, although still too thin for his height and build, he had put on a little weight since the last time she had examined him, lying silent and unresponsive in his hospital bed. Conscious of a pity she knew she must not show, she asked gently, “How do you feel now that you’re up and about again, Cap—Mr. Gresham?”

“Oh, I’m in fine shape, all things considered.”

“And the headaches?”

He shrugged. “I get them occasionally and at times they black me out. But they’re becoming less frequent and your Dr. Burger assures me they’ll pass, given time. One good thing—I mostly get warning when one’s about to hit me and your colleagues have prescribed some capsules, which seem to be pretty effective. Anyway, I’m considered quite safe enough to hold a driving licence, even if I can’t fly airplanes. They made me take a test, of course, but I passed that—with flying colours—yesterday. Just as well, because I’m going to have to drive a car in my new job.”

“You’ve got a job already!” Sarah hadn’t meant to betray her surprise, but aware that she had done so, went on hastily, “Oh, I’m so glad . . . what sort of job is it, Mr. Gresham?”

The sensitive mouth hardened. “Selling insurance, Dr. Hamilton. Not exactly what I’d have chosen, but I got the chance through a friend, and since I was hardly in a position to choose, I accepted. The airline offered me an executive job in their passenger department, which would have paid better, but I didn’t fancy sitting behind a desk watching other guys take the airplanes out, so”—his face relaxed briefly into a smile—“I figured I’d give insurance a go. It’s quite an opportunity, I guess, provided I can learn to reel off the patter with the right amount of conviction. The company put me through a course in salesmanship while I was in here—occupational readjustment, Burger called it, a step-up from occupational therapy—and I passed that with flying colours, too. They’re sending me to open a new branch office in Granville, after I’ve—”

“Where,” Sarah interrupted, startled, “where did you say you were being sent?” “Granville,” Steve Gresham repeated. He spelt it slowly. “You won’t have heard of the place. It’s just a small, up-state country town, the centre of a rural area, with a population of . . .” he started to quote statistics, but she again cut him short.

“Yes, I know all that.”

“You mean you actually know Granville?” It was his turn to display surprise. “I didn’t imagine anyone here did . . . and you’re British! How come you’ve been there?”

“Oh, I haven’t,” she amended. “Not yet. In fact, I’m not sure that I ever will, but, by an odd coincidence, I’ve been offered a job there too.”

“You have? Well, for crying out loud! What would you want with a job in Granville?”

“Well, you see, Dr. Burger thinks I ought to learn about the American way of life, at first hand, by working in a general practice for a time. And it happens that a friend of the Professor’s is ill and needs a locum, because he has to have hospital treatment . . .” She told him about Dr. John Mason and then, a trifle wryly, explained the reasons underlying the suggestion that she should act as his locum tenens.

Steve Gresham listened in silence, a faintly puzzled expression on his face. When Sarah broke off, remembering that he was a patient and fearful lest she had said too much, he seated himself in the chair he had earlier refused and, leaning across the desk towards her, asked quietly, “Surely I don’t figure on the list of patients you failed to communicate with?”

“You know the answer to that better than I do.” She tried but could not quite keep the note of reproach from sounding in her voice. “You head the list, Mr. Gresham. I never began to get through to you, did I?”

“Ah!” He sighed, and Sarah noticed suddenly that he was white and tense, as if for some reason what she had said had hurt him unbearably. All her professional instincts belatedly alerted, she endeavoured to reassure him, to gloss over the implied reproof, but he silenced her with a swift, imperious wave of the hand.

“I’m not your patient any more, Dr. Hamilton—I’m not anybody’s patient. They just discharged me, remember— discharged me as fit to go out into the great big world again and start earning a living.”

“I’m sorry. Truly, I—”

“It was I who came to apologise to you,” Steve Gresham put in. “But I never got around to it, did I?” His voice softened. “For the record, Dr. Sarah Hamilton, you got through to me all right . . . so far and so deep, you made me remember things I didn’t want to remember, things I was trying to shut out of my mind. That was why I asked for you to be taken off my case. It was no reflection on your professional competence, believe me—the reverse, in fact. I wanted to go on wallowing in self-pity, instead of facing up to what I had to at that enquiry. Instead of admitting that I was responsible for the loss of twenty-three lives.” He rose, a tall, commanding figure, his emotions perfectly under control now. “My taxi will be here. I’d better go. But tell me—are you going to take that locum in Granville?”

Sarah rose with him, feeling strangely at a loss.

“I haven’t made up my mind yet, though I must very soon. If I go, I must leave here tomorrow. But in the circumstances, perhaps you . . . perhaps you would rather I didn’t. I mean—”

“Take it,” he begged. “Call Dr.— what’s his name? Dr. Mason now, right away, and say you’re coming. Please.”

“You want me to?” She stared at him in disbelief, but Steve Gresham’s eyes met hers, lit with sudden, shining warmth. “Yes, I do. More than I can tell you.”

“But why?” He had refused her professional services, rejected all her efforts to help him in the past, and now . . . “I don’t understand, Mr. Gresham. Why should you want me in Granville?” Her question was sceptically voiced, but his gaze did not flinch from hers.

“Maybe I’m being selfish, Doctor, but it would be great to have you there—a friend, one person I can talk to and trust.” She could not doubt his sincerity, it was in eyes and voice. “Not that you’d have to acknowledge me, if you didn’t feel like it . . . our paths wouldn’t necessarily have to cross. Granville is a small place, but I guess it could hold us both and we could be—how does that song express it? ‘Strangers when we meet,’ huh? So far as I’m concerned, just knowing you were there would be enough.” He held out his hand, and Sarah, putting her own into it, felt the strength of his fingers as they closed about hers. A small thrill, which she hadn’t expected to feel but engendered by his handclasp, coursed up her arm and sent the colour rushing to her cheeks. “I shan’t be there for around a week,” he told her. “I have to pick up a company car, attend a weekend course of instruction here and then stop off for a day or so, to get my briefing from the District Manager in Ellis County. But I hope I’ll see you, even if it’s at a distance. Good luck, Doctor!”

Before she could think of an answer, he had gone. Sarah sat down again, her thoughts in momentary confusion; then, uncertainty resolved at last, she picked up the phone. “I’d like an outside line, please,” she told the hospital switchboard operator and, her voice quite firm, she gave Dr. Mason’s number. He had evidently been waiting for her call, since he answered at once.

“I’m very glad,” he said, when she had identified herself and announced her decision. “My old friend, Professor Friedlander, speaks most highly of you, Dr. Hamilton. I’m sure I could not leave my practice in better hands and I shall look forward to meeting you tomorrow. That will give me a week to show you around Granville, and, there’ll be a car waiting at the station when your train gets in. So till tomorrow, Doctor.”

Sarah replaced the receiver. Before leaving the office, she rang through to the Professor.

“I believe you’ve reached the right decision,” he assured her. “So it only remains for me to wish you luck in your new field of endeavour . . . and this I do, with all my heart.”

1

“WHAT’S the matter, kid? You’re not scared, are you?” The man’s voice was soft, persuasive, deliberately calculated not to frighten her, yet in spite of this, the child shrank from him.

By the faint gleam of light from the dash, she could see his eyes and the expression in them sent swift waves of a nameless fear coursing down her spine. She shivered, wishing fervently that she had refused his offer of a lift when the black car had pulled up beside her. Now that it was too late, she knew it would have been better to have stood in the rain at the surburban bus stop than to have trusted herself to this strange man with the soft voice, whose cold eyes belied the gently spoken promise to deliver her safely to her home.

He leaned closer, smiling, and she felt his warm breath on her cheek. “What’s your name? You didn’t tell me, did you? Seems kind of silly to go on calling you kid, when we’re going to be friends. You do have a name, don’t you?”

The little girl nodded, fighting back the tears and answered with a brave show of defiance, “Of course I do, everybody does. It’s Mary—Mary Ellen Scott. And please, I—I want to go home.”

“All in good time, Mary. We’ve hardly gotten to know each other yet and I want us to be friends—real friends. I guess you’d like that, wouldn’t you?” When she did not reply, his tone sharpened and he asked abruptly, “How old are you?”