Little Stranger, The by Waters Sarah

Author:Waters, Sarah [Waters, Sarah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Novel
ISBN: 9780771087882
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
Published: 2009-05-05T05:00:00+00:00

I found myself recalling that sigh a day or two later, as I was making my arrangements for the district hospital dance. The dance was an annual event, meant as a fund-raiser; no one except the younger people treated it very seriously, but the local doctors liked to attend, along with their wives and grown-up children. We Lidcote physicians took it in turns to go along, and this year it was the turn of Graham and me, while our locum, Frank Wise, and Dr Seeley’s partner, Morrison, remained on call. As a bachelor I was at liberty to take along a guest or two, and a few months earlier, thinking ahead to the night, I’d actually considered asking Mrs Ayres. Now that she was still so relatively unwell, her attendance was out of the question; but it occurred to me that Caroline might be willing to partner me, if it was for the sake of an evening away from Hundreds. Of course, I thought it just as possible she’d be appalled to be asked along, at the last minute, to what was essentially a ‘works do’, and I dithered over whether or not to suggest it. But I’d forgotten that ironic streak of hers.

‘A doctors’ dance!’ she said, delighted, when I finally called her up to invite her. ‘Oh, I should love to.’

‘Are you sure? It’s a funny old event. And it’s more of a nurses’ dance than a doctors’. The women usually far outnumber the men.’

‘I bet they do! All pink and hysterical at being let off the wards, just like the junior Wrens used to be, at naval parties. And does Matron drink too much, and disgrace herself with the surgeons? Oh, say she does.’

‘Now, steady on,’ I said, ‘or there’ll be no surprises.’

She laughed, and even over the imperfect telephone line I could hear the note of real pleasure in her voice, and I was glad I’d asked her. I don’t know if, in agreeing to be my guest, she had any other motive in mind. It would be odd, I suppose, for an unmarried woman of her age to look forward to a dance without giving a thought to the single men who might be there. But if her ideas were running that way, she hid them well. Perhaps her little humiliation with Mr Morley had taught her to be cautious. She spoke about the dance as if she and I would be a pair of elderly lookers-on at the fun. And when I picked her up on the night in question I found her dressed very unshowily, in an olive-coloured sleeveless gown, with her hair hanging loose and uncurled, her throat and hands, as usual, bare, and her heavy face almost free of make-up.

We left Mrs Ayres in the little parlour, apparently not at all unhappy to have an evening to herself. She had a tray across her lap and was going through some old letters of her husband’s, putting them in neat, ordered bundles.

Still, I felt awkward about leaving her alone.

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