Air Ambulance by Jean S. Macleod Read Free Book Online Page B

observed. “How long will you remain with the air ambulance?”
    “I think I’m going to like the work,” Alison said eagerly, “so it will be up to Matron to decide. A good many of our nurses are eager to be on the rota, of course. It’s amazing how much enthusiasm there is for the work.”
    “I don’t know what the islanders would do without you people,” he said with a smile. “A good many lives must have been sacrificed to their isolation before these desperately ill folk could be brought safely to the big hospitals. I miss the life,” he added abruptly, “although I suppose I have found compensation enough on Heimra.”
    She had not expected him to make such a confession quite so openly, and she ventured to say:
    “I remember you at the Victoria.”
    His smile deepened.
    “I was a very junior houseman then,” he recalled. “I remember you, too. You were the probationer who never seemed to be able to keep her hair out of her eyes!”
    “I didn’t think you would remember,” she told him, feeling that his admission had made it easier to talk to him. “You left for Edinburgh soon after I came.”
    “Yes, that’s true.” His thoughts seemed to go beyond her, beyond the present, deep into the past. “That was my first step in the direction of Heimra,” he admitted. “I learned a lot about spastics in Edinburgh.”
    Alison longed to ask him what he had meant about Heimra, but Andrew came to stand beside her, no longer absorbed in the case of stuffed birds at the far end of the room which appeared to have fascinated him as soon as he came in.
    “Would you like some more coffee?” Blair asked.
    She shook her head.
    “I suppose I ought to go,” she said reluctantly. “I don’t think there was anything very serious wrong with the plane, and we haven’t a lot of time to spare.”
    “I wish you could come to Heimra Beag,” Andrew said wistfully as Mrs. MacIver came into the room.
    “Some day, perhaps I shall,” Alison said, thinking that she never would.
    “That Murdock man’s there now, Mr. Blair,” Janet MacIver said. “Maybe you could have a word with him before you go?”
    Blair looked at Alison.
    “I shouldn’t be many minutes,” he said. “I’m sure Andrew will want to see you off.”
    Andrew stood hesitating, torn between his desire to follow his uncle and an equally strong desire to stay where he was.
    “Will you not go before we come back?” he asked breathlessly at last.
    “No,” Alison promised, “I’ll wait, Andrew, if you’re not going to be too long.”
    He went after Blair and Mrs. MacIver began to collect the coffee cups on to her tray.
    “He’s a fine man is Fergus Blair,” she observed. “I knew him when he was no more than Andrew’s age. He used to come over here from Garrisdale House with his father and sit and stare at the stuffed birds there just the way the boy does now. He never liked the idea of them being dead—shot and shut up in a glass box. He used to purse his wee mouth and ask who put them there, and my man used to say he felt glad he hadn’t done it! There’s a bird sanctuary over on Heimra Beag now, and maybe Mr. Blair got the idea from that very case over there in the corner.” She regarded Alison speculatively for a moment. “You’re new to the Ambulance,” she said. “You’ll not know much about the islands or about Mr. Blair. Some folks would have it that he’s a ruthless man and a stern landlord, but I’ve seen too much of his kindness to be agreeing to that. He’d have to be hard to be dealing with some of the folks round here, or they’d make a fool of him. They’re lazy, some of them, and don’t want to work. They got away with a lot when his brother was the laird. Gavin Blair was a weak man. He let people overrule his decisions because he wouldn’t hurt a fly. He was always like that.”
    She paused in the doorway, as if unwilling to let Alison go. The island was remote. It was not every day that she had the pleasure of