Midnight Sun's Magic

She gaped at him. If you didn’t know someone with whom you worked each day and spent a good deal of your leisure with for the best part of three years, surely you should give it up as a bad job? And what about love, she thought confusedly—falling in love? Surely that came in a blinding flash all of a sudden, not after months of lukewarm affection? If Arthur had been in love with her, really in love, probably she would have married him even though she felt nothing but a deep regard for him. As it was she could see now, very clearly indeed, that she could never marry him. Even if she never married, she wouldn’t regret it. She said now: ‘I’m not the right wife for you, Arthur. I know we’re good friends and we’ve got used to seeing each other every day, but that’s not enough, not for me, anyway.’

He had picked up a chart and had his pen poised to write. ‘If that’s how you feel about it, Annis, then there’s no more to be said, is there?’

She couldn’t refrain from asking him: ‘Don’t you mind?’

He thought carefully before he answered. ‘Yes, at the moment I mind. I’d woven you into the pattern of my future…’

‘Yes, but the present, Arthur—never mind the future!’

He looked surprised. ‘But the future matters, Annis. I must make a success of it; do exactly what I’ve planned.’

‘Did you plan me into it, then?’

‘Oh, yes—later on.’

‘But I’m twenty-seven, Arthur!’

‘Another three or four years and we could have discussed marriage,’ he told her comfortably. ‘Neither of us, I fancy, would want children—our life would have been too busy.’ He smiled at her kindly. ‘If you like, we’ll forget the whole of this conversation.’

She wanted to cry, a mixture of rage and sorrow, she supposed miserably. ‘No, Arthur, I don’t want to forget it. We’ve—we’ve had a very pleasant friendship and I’m sure you’ll find someone exactly right for you.’

One who’ll wait patiently until he has his life exactly as he wants it and can fit a wife in without it interfering, she thought, and said out loud:

‘What shall we do about Archie? Do you suppose he’s cooking up something nasty?’

She could see the relief on his face as he began on the pros and cons of operating on Archie.

She wasn’t off duty until eight o’clock that evening and she didn’t mind; after a busy day she would be too tired to do more than have her supper, a bath, and then in her dressing gown, sit for a while drinking tea in one or other of the Sisters’ bedrooms.

An arrangement which didn’t mature. True, she got off duty and had her supper, but on her way over to the Home, Dodge, the head porter, singled her out from the little group crossing the entrance hall and handed her a letter.

‘Came this evening,’ he told her, ‘and got overlooked, Sister. I was just going to send it over to the Home.’

She recognised her brother’s writing and the Norwegian stamp as she took it, pushed it idly into a pocket, thanked Dodge and ran to catch up to the others. Freddy wrote spasmodically and infrequently and although they were a devoted brother and sister, she had long ago given up getting him to do otherwise. He was a few years younger than she and a clever atomic engineer whose work took him all over the world. At the moment he was in Spitzbergen, working with a team in some remote spot and glad to be there, for earlier in the year he had broken off his engagement to a girl Annis had privately considered not at all suitable for him to marry, and was mending a supposedly broken heart among the snow and ice and no girls for miles around. Annis, knowing him well, guessed that by the time he returned to civilisation he would be ready to fall in love all over again.

There was something worth seeing on the TV someone had offered and she went with the rest of them, to crowd round the box in the rather small, stuffy room which they all shared. It was mild for the time of year and still light, and in between watching they discussed summer clothes and holidays. Annis, listening to her friends arguing about the various places they would like to visit, wondered what she would do. There was Great-Aunt Mary at Mere, of course, always glad to see her or Freddy, for they were all the family she had and she had left it rather late to arrange anything else, for she had the first two weeks of her holidays in a month’s time when it would be the middle of June. She sighed a little and remembered her letter.

Freddy wrote briefly; he was never one to waste time on letters anyway. She read the few lines in a moment or two and then read them again, very slowly this time. Freddy wanted her to join him—the cook-cum-secretary-cum-nurse who was attached to the team had been flown back to Oslo with appendicitis and he had immediately thought of her to fill the gap and offered to get her there as quickly as possible. ‘It’s time you had a change,’ he wrote, cheerfully impervious to things like giving in her notice and whether she wanted to go anyway, ‘it’s almost summer here and you’ll love it—no real hard work and you couldn’t meet a nicer bunch of chaps than the team. Wire me when you intend to arrive. We can manage for a week or two, but make it sooner than that if you can. Will send information about how to reach us when I hear from you; send a radiogram.’

Her first impulse was to dismiss the whole thing as one of Freddy’s scatterbrained ideas. It was Nora Kemp, Sister on Women’s Surgical and a great friend of Annis, who asked her why she looked so surprised and when Annis told her, said at once: ‘But of course you must go! What a chance—you could always get taken back on the staff here, but I bet no one will ever ask you to go to Spitzbergen again. I wish he’d asked me.’

‘But they would want me at once—or in a week at most.’

Everyone was listening now and several voices joined in. ‘You’ve got holidays due,’ said someone, ‘three weeks, isn’t it? Well, you can give notice and leave at the end of the week. No reason why you shouldn’t—family matters, you know, and you’ve got Carol Drew as Staff, haven’t you? She’s quite able to step into your shoes.’

It was Peggy Trevitt, Junior Sister on Casualty, who offered slyly: ‘Perhaps Annis doesn’t want to go— Arthur might object.’

Annis shook her head. ‘Why should he?’ she wanted to know coolly. She didn’t like Peggy all that much.

‘Well, of course if you only went for a few weeks,’ conceded Peggy.

‘I’ve been thinking of a change, anyway,’ declared Annis, who hadn’t given the idea a thought until that moment. ‘I think perhaps I’ll go.’

That triggered off a lively discussion as to the clothes she should take with her and how she should get there.

‘By plane?’ asked Nora. ‘But is there anywhere where one can land up there? Surely it’s all rocks and mountains and ice…’

‘Boat?’ ventured Annis. ‘I don’t even know if people actually live there.’

‘Well, you soon will…’ There was a good deal of laughter. ‘You’ll need a fur coat, Annis, and those hideous boots that look like bedsocks—and thick woolly undies…’

‘It’s summer there,’ observed Annis. ‘Freddy said something about getting tanned.’ She got up. ‘Well, I shall sleep on it. Perhaps Miss Phipps won’t let me go in a week’s time.’

But Miss Phipps, surprisingly, did. She was reluctant to let Annis go, of course, for she would be losing a good nurse, but she had expected to do that anyway and she was only surprised that Annis wanted to leave for a reason other than marrying Arthur Potter. Like her lesser colleagues, she had watched the affair blossom, although she had considered privately that the parties concerned were taking far too long to make up their minds, and now, looking at the beautiful creature standing in front of her desk, she felt a vague relief. Annis Brown was far too good for him. Perhaps if she went on this expedition or whatever it was, she would meet someone who could match her in looks and not take her for granted like Mr Potter did. Miss Phipps thought that in Sister Brown’s place she would most certainly have gone herself—it sounded most interesting and a little unusual, and she was a sensible girl as well as being a beautiful one. Miss Phipps, conjuring up rather inaccurate mental pictures of the Spitzbergen landscape, felt a distinct touch of envy.

Having made up her mind, Annis didn’t waste time. She sent a radiogram to Freddy, asking for directions as to how to get there, bought slacks and an assortment of blouses and sweaters, a new anorak, some sensible shoes and a supply of cosmetics; Freddy had said that the country looked lovely, but he had never mentioned shops. She added a book or two, and obedient to the instructions which Freddy sent by return, booked on a flight to Tromso where she would be met. That left her with exactly a day in which to visit Great-Aunt Mary.

She left London very early in the morning, having said her goodbyes on the previous day, and that had included a rather uncomfortable ten minutes with Arthur. He had been rather superior about it all, treating it as a joke and declaring in his calm way that she would probably hate the whole set-up when she got there. ‘I might even renew our very pleasant relationship when you return, as most certainly you will.’ He had smiled at her and for a brief moment she wondered if she was being a complete fool, but she had pushed the idea away at once, feeling resentful at his smugness. And now in the train she wasn’t thinking about him at all, she was thinking with regret of the ward she had left; all the funny, noisy, pathetic children and babies who lived in it, however briefly. She would miss them; she would miss her friends too; she had made a great many during her years in hospital. She settled back in her seat and picked up the morning paper. There was no point in getting sentimental, she told herself firmly.

It was a two-hour journey to Gillingham, the nearest station to Mere. Only a handful of people got out there; a small, pleasant country town where the ticket collector had time to smile and say good morning as they filed out of the station. Great-Aunt Mary was outside at the wheel of the Morris 1000 which she had bought years ago and didn’t intend to change. ‘It will last as long as I shall,’ she had declared to a car salesman who had done his best to persuade her to trade it in for a more modern car, ‘and that’s more than can be said for a great many motor cars put on the market these days, young man.’

She waved to Annis now and then put her head through the window to say: ‘Put everything in the boot, dear, I shall need the back for the groceries.’

She offered a sunburnt cheek for Annis to kiss and took a good look at her. ‘London doesn’t suit you. I’m glad you’re going on this trip with Freddy, it sounds a most unusual set-up, but then I never have pretended to understand these modern atomic things…’

‘I think it’s electronics, too,’ murmured Annis.

‘All one and the same,’ declared Great-Aunt Mary largely, ‘but I should think that part of the world should be rather interesting.’

She was driving at a stately pace along the crown of the road, taking no notice of those who would like to overtake and couldn’t. ‘Who’s meeting you when you get there?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Annis. ‘I hope it’s Freddy, then he can tell me a bit about it. I don’t even know how long I’m to be there.’

‘A nice change from living to a timetable. It’ll do you good, my dear—another year or two at that hospital and you would have been an old maid, whether you’d married that Arthur fellow or not.’

Annis didn’t answer that, for it was very probably true; she said instead: ‘Well, I am looking forward to it. Are you stopping at Walton’s?’

‘Only to pick up a few things they’ll have ready for me. Do you really have to go back this evening?’

‘Yes, Aunt. The plane goes very early in the morning—I’m spending the night at an hotel close by the airport—my case is there already.’

Great-Aunt Mary had slowed down as they entered the village, swung round the corner between the two local pubs, and stopped before the grocer’s.

‘What clothes are you taking?’ she wanted to know. She was a poor dresser herself; she had a short, plump figure which she declared nothing off the peg fitted, and she was right, but that didn’t stop her loving clothes. They talked about them while the groceries were loaded, and didn’t pause when she drove on presently to stop a few hundred yards further, pull into a side road and stop.

They walked from the car to the cottage, carrying the groceries between them, down a narrow path running beside a clear stream and crossed at intervals by little bridges leading to the back gardens on the other side.

Great-Aunt Mary’s cottage had a bridge too, leading to a tiny triangle of grass and flowers which fronted her home: a red brick Victorian cottage, its side wall rising straight out of the stream with windows opening on to it. It was bigger inside than it looked from the lane—true, the hall was narrow but the staircase was nicely placed and the dining room and what its owner called the drawing room were a fair size, and to make up for the Lilliputian kitchen, there were innumerable cupboards, big enough to house a piano if needed. Annis loved it; she had lived there for a few years after her parents died, going as a weekly boarder to Sher-borne School for Girls while Freddy had gone to Bryanston, coming home for school holidays, and she had always returned for holidays all the time she had been at St Anselm’s. She looked around her now, at the white walls hung with a wide variety of pictures, some really good, some framed cards which her aunt had taken a fancy to, at the old-fashioned furniture which fitted so well into the Victorian appearance of the little place and the windows with their pretty chintz curtains. ‘It’s nice to be home,’ she said.