Cover illustration by Mort Engel
Valerie Wyndham, R.N.,
was looking forward to a few weeks of relaxation at a mountain cottage. But
Valerie was far too pretty to escape attention, and too much a dedicated nurse
to deny a request for help. That was how she found herself involved with the darkly
handsome Adam Balin, owner of the famous Balin estate. But the charming young
doctor, Ted Meredith, hated Adam and wanted Val to himself. And there was
someone else—someone who had made it clear that Valerie was unwanted, and would
stop at nothing to get her out of the way …
GRADE: C-
BEST QUOTES:
“I think it is my duty to reprove you—or maybe kiss you.”
REVIEW:
Nurse Valerie Wyndham is headed for the Berkshires in
Massachusetts for vacation, to stay in the lakeside cottage of a fellow nurse. Her
arrival, however, is anything but relaxing—she finds a surly, apple-eating
teenager ensconced in the place, so arrogant that she doesn’t even bother to
split the scene when Val shows up and reprimands her for the damage the youth
has inflicted on the owner’s treasured collection of salt and pepper shakers. Val
quickly identifies the girl as Peggy Balin and pops into the old Balin estate
to have a word with Peggy’s older brother, Adam, who is her guardian, as their
parents are deceased. There she finds him, tall, dark, arrogant, unpleasant,
and baleful, not excessively willing to take his sister to task for her crimes,
and Peggy stomps out after tossing what is apparently meant as a cutting blow,
a comment about how limited the Balin family vocabulary seems to be. Shows
them!
In what is de rigueur in VNRNs, the vacationing nurse stops in to
say hello to the local GP, Dr. Meredith, who talks about his dream to create a
medical center so cushy and resort-like that busy executives wouldn’t mind
coming for medical treatment, checking in with their wives for a few days of
R&R and prostate exams. Also de
rigueur, the next night Val is out on a date with his son, Ted. After he
drops her off, she finds an intruder in the kitchen—this one an ugly hobo who
makes to attack her, when Ted hears her scream and reappears in time to save
her. It’s a gratuitous blip in the story that ends there. I’m not sure what
attempted sexual assault was meant to demonstrate in these stories—titillation?
setting up the boyfriend as a hero?—but in any event, the offhanded treatment
of such a grave issue is more than a little annoying, if not
disconcerting.
The next morning, Adam Balin calls to apologize for his
rudeness and to invite her over to tour his historic house. While there, Christabel
Wheeler, a female acquaintance of Adam’s, drops by, and she’s a beautiful, rich,
insulting snob. Val responds by stomping off again, furious at Adam, of all
people, feeling that “he had no right to expose her to a situation where she
was at a definite disadvantaage as a stranger.” Since Chris had shown up
uninvited, and Adam had in fact been angry at Chris for her comments, it’s unclear
exactly what he should have done, but try telling Nurse Val that.
Two days later, Val returns from an outing to the village to
find the house vandalized again, and an apple core in the sink. But she decides
against going to the police because nothing had been broken, and “all she
would accomplish would be to put herself on record as a fault-finding,
ill-natured termagant.” She decides to go talk to Adam, as she’s now decided that
“Peggy needed help, not censure.” The pair hits on the glorious plan of putting
Peggy in charge of a bus full of old women coming to tour the Balin house.
Needless to say, on the day of the tour, Peggy is nowhere to be found,
justifiably dubious about spending the day with Mrs. Regina Abernathy and the
Woman’s Culture Club. Not to be thwarted, Adam and Val next plan to drag poor Peggy
on a hike, but Peggy skips out on that adventure, too, and Chris shows up in
her stead. The outing is a complete fiasco, with Chris spraining her ankle and
leaning heavily on Adam the whole way back. Val becomes increasingly
irrational, deciding, “that was the type of person he wanted to marry,” though
Adam has shown nothing but irritation with Chris the whole day.
For the next crisis, Val is out driving one evening when she
comes to a bridge and finds a crowd: Peggy Balin is out on the other side of
the railing, and a crowd below is urging her to go for it. So Val shimmies up
the girders and psychologizes the poor kid into climbing down. Afterward, as
Adam tries to talk to Val about how to manage Peggy, Val goes psychotic and
starts fuming about how he should ask Chris Wheeler for her opinion. Adam is
rightly confused: “Who says I was going to marry her?” he asks. “No one,” Val
is forced to admit. Adam surprisingly agrees to see Val the next day, the
last of her vacation, to talk about Peggy. Val cries herself to sleep: “Not a
word to show that he cared whether Val Wyndham went or stayed. He had made it
plain he didn’t care.” So she pulls the classic seventh-grade mind game and “forgets”
that she’s agreed to meet Adam, instead driving out of town with Ted, who’d
proposed marriage a few days earlier. She has not yet given him an answer, but refuses
him as they are starting their date, and then kisses him later on. I have to
say I am not very fond of Valerie Wyndham.
Adam tracks her down that night, as she’s arriving home, and
the two discuss sending Peggy away on a cruise ship school, giving Adam’s house
to old Dr. Meredith for his wacky health resort idea, and—finally—getting married.
Accustomed to nutty women, living with his sister and friends with Chris
Wheeler since childhood, Adam is rounding out the trio with Val, the poor man.
Though the character of Ted Meredith injects some humor into the book, overall this story is stupid and maddening, and the heroine, as I have previously mentioned, is
a dopey nut job. This book may be a holiday for a nurse, but it won’t be one
for you if you bother to read it.
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