by Betty Neels
‘How do you know that I…I don’t dislike you, not any more, you’ve—you’ve been very kind and I’m grateful.’
‘Save your gratitude until you’ve been in Bethnal Green for a couple of weeks.’ He was walking her between the rose-beds towards the sundial at the back of the house. ‘You look so right here among the flowers—I wonder if I’m doing right, taking you away from all this?’
‘Oh, yes, you are!’ Celine sounded almost frantic. ‘You wouldn’t change your mind now? I’ll work hard, I will really…I must get away!’
‘I know that.’ Oliver stopped and looked down into her face. ‘It’s still a deep hurt, isn’t it? You poor girl—and I won’t make it worse by telling you you’ll get over it.’
He sounded kind. Celine, struggling against a desire to burst into tears, sniffed, and he passed her a handkerchief without comment.
‘A lovely evening,’ he observed, taking no notice of the sniffs. ‘This is a delightful spot, and you’ll miss it, of course, but the stars are the same.’ He stopped again and tilted his head. ‘Look, you can pick any one you like and call it yours and know it’s just as clearly seen here as it is in Bethnal Green. Have that bright one straight above your head.’ And when she looked up obediently: ‘It’s your midsummer star, and it will always be there, like a fairy godmother.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous—you surely don’t believe in fairies?’
‘Perhaps not fairies, but certainly in kindly fate. One day you’ll believe that too, Celine—but not yet. Now, off to bed with you, we’re leaving after breakfast.’
He walked her briskly back to the house, and once inside wished her goodnight equally briskly, but his eyes lingered on her tired unhappy face and he added: ‘I’ll say goodnight to everyone for you, shall I?’ And when she nodded, he turned away and went into the drawing-room.
They left at mid-morning and Oliver tactfully wandered off while Celine said goodbye to her mother and father, then he got into the car and drove her away before there was time to have second thoughts, entertaining her with a mild flow of conversation which gave her little time to herself. As they threaded their way through the beginnings of Bagshot he slowed. ‘I think we’ll stop for lunch,’ he observed. ‘I don’t know about you, but I’m hungry.’
Celine had no appetite at all, but she was too polite to say so. He took her to Pennyhill Park, and once in the Latymer Room she was forced to admit to herself that the food on the menu looked tempting, and with almost no breakfast inside her, lunch was a must, and once started on delicious lobster patties, tournedos Rossini, and a delicious ice-cream, she discovered that she was hungry after all.
Once they reached London she was a little daunted to find that Oliver intended driving straight through the heart of the city; even though the rush hour was still a couple of hours away, there was plenty of traffic, but he didn’t seem to mind. He drove on steadily until they reached the Mile End Road and turned away from the river towards Victoria Park, but only for a few minutes. Presently he turned off the busy road and wound his way through a jungle of narrow back streets, lined with small shabby houses, overshadowed by tower blocks. Celine sat without speaking; somehow she hadn’t imagined it quite like this. She thought of home and the endless garden and the fields beyond and felt lost. She didn’t see Oliver’s sideways glance at her tense face.
‘Rather different, isn’t it?’ he observed easily. We’re lucky, you and I, to have somewhere pleasant to live.’
For the sake of something to say, she asked: ‘Oh, do you live in the country too?’
He hesitated for a second. ‘I’ve a house at Chiswick, by the river, it’s surprisingly quiet there.’
He was driving slowly, edging past parked cars, children playing in the street, gossiping groups spilling off the pavements. He reached a corner, turned it and stopped before a bleak building which none the less had clean windows and fresh paintwork.
‘Here we are.’ He leaned across and opened her door for her and got out himself. Celine stood on the pavement for a moment, looking around her. It was a busy street, full of tatty shops, some of them empty, and small brick houses, all exactly alike. The pavements were crowded and quite a few people had stopped to stare; most of them appeared to know Oliver, for there was a chorus of, ‘Ullo, Doc’, as he crossed the pavement and opened the door. There was a big painted board nailed to the wall, proclaiming the surgery hours and the telephone number, and Celine stopped to read it before she followed him inside.
The passage was narrow, painted cream with a cheerful red-tiled floor, and there was a pot plant on a wall bracket, spilling vivid geraniums. The doors were primrose yellow and there seemed to be any number of them. Oliver passed them all and opened the door facing them at the end of the passage. The room was at the back of the house, with a window overlooking a very small back yard, paved and dotted with concrete bowls filled with more geraniums. The room was bright with cream paint and distempered walls. It had two desks in it, at one of which sat a woman in nurse’s uniform. She had sharp features, wiry grey hair and an air of great energy.
She looked up as Oliver opened the door and ushered Celine in, and smiled widely. ‘Right on time!’ she exclaimed approvingly. ‘I’ll get tea at once, Dr Seymour.’
‘Meet Celine Baylis,’ said Oliver. ‘Celine, this is my right hand and prop, Sister Griffiths—my left hand, Nurse Byng, is on holiday. We shall all be glad of a willing slave, won’t we, Maggie?’
‘Indeed we shall. Are you taking the clinic this evening, Doctor?’
Oliver had gone to the desk and was bending over the stack of post. ‘Yes, why not? David could do with some help, I expect.’ He glanced up at Celine, standing uncertainly at the door still. ‘Sit down, Celine—when we’ve had a cup of tea I’ll get Mrs Thatch to take you to your room and show you round.’
There wasn’t much time wasted over tea, and the conversation was confined to Celine and Sister Griffiths because Oliver was reading his letters and frowning over forms. Celine found herself dismissed with kindly detachment, to be led away by Mrs Thatch, a cheerful Cockney body who had the top floor flat, where she lived with her husband. ‘There’s a nice room for you, ducks,’ she told Celine, leading the way up the narrow staircase. ‘A bed-sit all ter yerself. I’ll bring yer breakfast and yer supper and tidy up like. There’s a gas ring if yer want a cuppa, and a washbasin. Classy, I call it.’
Never mind what Mrs Thatch called it, thought Celine, looking round the room she was ushered into; it was a far cry from her room at home. It had all the comforts, it was true, and indeed there was a washbasin and a gas ring and a partitioned off corner with kettle, saucepan and crockery neatly stowed; the curtains were pretty too, matching the spread which disguised the divan bed, but looking at it, she was suddenly homesick for her own elegant bedroom. ‘It’s very nice,’ she told her companion, and managed a smile. ‘Is there a bathroom?’
‘Lor’ bless yer, yes,’ declared her companion. “Ot and cold too, all day and all night. There’s two more rooms on the landing—no one in ’em though—nurse Byng goes ’ome each evening and Sister Griffiths got a flat, but you’ve no need to be nervous—me and Alf, we’re always upstairs.’ She looked at Celine’s Gucci case on the bed. ‘I’ll leave yer ter unpack, miss. I daresay the doctor’ll ’ave some work for yer later.’
Left to herself, Celine hung her clothes in the built-in cupboard along one wall, arranged everything else in the drawers in the dressing table, tidied her person, did her face and hair, then went downstairs and through the door at the bottom opening into the hall. And all this while she hadn’t allowed herself to think about Nicky. All the doors were shut; she went to the room she had been in and knocked.
Oliver’s ‘Come in’ sounded impatient, and: ‘Don’t knock,’ he told her, barely raising his head from the desk. He nodded towards a door behind him. ‘That’s my office; just walk in and out if you want something.’ He raised his voice. ‘Maggie, take Celine round the place, will you? There�
��s time before we open.’
He didn’t look up as Sister Griffiths appeared and led Celine away.
The building was surprisingly big—an old house, gutted inside and rebuilt according to Oliver’s plans, Sister Griffiths explained, opening and shutting doors on to waiting-room, examination rooms, sterilising room, a small well equipped first aid room, a spotless kitchenette, even a bathroom. At Celine’s look of surprise Sister Griffiths said dryly: ‘It’s often quicker to bath a small child—if they’re grubby Dr Seymour can’t always examine easily.’
She glanced at Celine, who had said nothing at all during their tour of inspection. ‘Do you think you’ll like it? It’s hard work—you’ll have all kinds of dirty jobs to do, you know—general dogsbody, as it were. And the hours are irregular.’
‘Yes, I—I was told that. I’d like to try it though and I’ll do my best.’
Sister Griffiths nodded. ‘I’m sure you will—nothing else would suit Dr Seymour. You look a big strong girl, thank heaven. Well, if you’ve seen everything, we’d better go back—we open shortly. I think it might be best if you stay with me this evening so you get some idea of what goes on.’
The waiting-room was already half full: Sister Griffiths, with the assured ease of long practice, sorted patients, took names, found notes and dropped a swift: ‘Get their coats off, will you, Celine? And hats if they’re wearing them. Several of them will need to be undressed—you can do that while Dr Seymour’s talking to the mothers.’
So Celine found herself dressing and undressing small unwilling children while Oliver, looking quite different and somehow very remote, sat at his desk, talking to the mothers, and presently, because she was tired and unhappy, the evening became a blur of trying to be quick and remembering many names and carrying out Oliver’s simple instructions.
The surgery seemed to go on for hours, and when it finally ended, there was the clearing up to do, chairs to be put straight, towels to be replaced, the floor to clean—tasks which fell to Celine’s lot, since Sister Griffiths was fully occupied with the first aid room and the surgery itself. There was no sign of Oliver, but presently she heard his voice, calling Sister Griffiths, and a few minutes later that lady appeared again.
‘Well, I’m for home,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Not so bad, was it? A nice easy evening, actually. We start at half past eight tomorrow, so you must be here by eight o’clock.’ She walked to the door, looking not in the least tired. ‘You did very well,’ she added kindly. ‘See you tomorrow.’
Celine said goodnight with a cheerfulness she didn’t feel, finished emptying the wastepaper baskets into the bin outside the back door and took off the blue overall she had been wearing. She felt hot and grubby and cross; surely they could have left her to settle in on her first evening instead of taking it for granted that she would plunge head first into a job she knew nothing about? She hung up the overall behind the door and started for the stairs. It was half past eight and she hoped devoutly that there was supper somewhere beyond them.
She had opened the door and had her foot on the bottom step when suddenly Oliver’s office door opened. ‘Finished?’ he asked. ‘We’re early this evening. Go and do your face and I’ll take you out to dinner.’
‘How kind,’ said Celine, rather coldly, ‘but there’ll be supper waiting for me, and I’m tired.’
‘So am I—all the more reason to eat,’ he smiled at her kindly. ‘You did very well, so Maggie tells me. Now run and wash or whatever—five minutes enough?’
For some reason quite beyond her comprehension, she agreed meekly that five minutes was quite enough.
She didn’t bother much with make-up, but brushed her hair smooth, dabbed powder on her nose and went down to meet him; if he didn’t like her like that he had himself to blame, she hadn’t wanted to go, anyway.
It was disconcerting to her that he barely glanced in her direction, but opened the door, locked it carefully behind him, and saw her into the car. ‘We’re not going far,’ he told her. ‘There’s a pub not too far away where we can get a good meal.’
The pub was a Victorian red brick monstrosity in the middle of a long busy street. Oliver manoeuvred the car between a van and a dilapidated banger, got out and opened her door. That he had been there before was obvious, for he went unhesitatingly through the door marked Saloon Bar, nodded a greeting to the shirt-sleeved bartender and went ahead of her to a small table in a corner where he pulled out a chair for her and then sat down opposite.
‘I come here from time to time,’ he explained casually. ‘What would you like to drink?’
The food was good—roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, roast potatoes and cabbage and a trifle afterwards. Not a meal Celine would have chosen on a warm summer’s evening, but once it was set before her, she discovered that she was hungry, and ate with an appetite to match her companion’s.
And while they ate, he talked about the clinic, elaborating on the rather sparse instructions she had had that evening, explaining when she could expect to be free and which day she could have each week. ‘There’s just one thing,’ he told her, ‘I’d prefer you not to go out alone in the evenings—get someone to go with you and see you back.’
‘But I don’t know anyone!’ She went faintly pink. ‘Well, I’ve a few friends in London, but I don’t expect they’d know how to get here.’
He smiled at her. ‘Well, we’ll worry about that later. I don’t see why you shouldn’t have a weekend free occasionally so that you can go home.’
‘Oh, that would be super!’
‘But not just yet. We don’t want to lose sight of the reason for your coming here, do we?’
Celine picked up her coffee cup with a hand which shook slightly. ‘No.’
Oliver’s voice was very even. ‘You don’t believe me now, but after a week or two of working here, you’ll be tired enough not to dream about Nicky, and later, when you’ve got into your stride, he won’t matter any more.’
She stared at him, her eyes bright with tears she wasn’t going to shed. ‘What do you know about it?’ she asked bitterly. ‘You go around arranging other people’s lives for them; I daresay you’re well-meaning, but you’ve no right…’
He said placidly: ‘You’re tired. I’ll take you back.’ There was nothing in his manner to show if he was annoyed with her; he chatted amiably as they returned and his goodnight as he unlocked the door and ushered her inside was perfectly friendly. Celine did find herself fretting about it as she got ready for bed; she didn’t really know him at all—indeed, he occupied her thoughts so thoroughly that she forgot all about Nicky.
But not for long. Slogging her way through a day of unaccustomed tasks, she found herself daydreaming; Nicky miraculously not married after all, arriving on the doorstep and taking her away; Nicky ringing up, even writing a letter. He didn’t know where she was, of course—common sense reared a prosaic head for a few seconds, but had no chance. At the back of her mind she was aware that she was behaving like a silly schoolgirl, and perhaps if she had been at home and could have gone for a walk with Dusty all the nonsense would have been blown out of her head. As it was, her dreams took a firm hold as she tidied up, emptied bowls, consoled weeping infants, took small clothes off and put them on again and generally made herself as useful as she knew how. Oliver wasn’t there. David Slater, his partner, a stocky young man with a nice face, introduced himself when he arrived a few minutes before the clinic was due to open.
Celine was on the point of asking where Oliver was and stopped just in time—it was no business of hers and she really didn’t care. She had said she would take the job for a few weeks because it would help her to get over the smart of Nicky’s behaviour, and she would stay, but that didn’t prevent the daydreams. The moment she was free she would go and see him; Oliver couldn’t prevent her doing that, and she had Mrs Seymour’s address.
She was free for a couple of hours after lunch, a snack meal shared with Sister Griffiths in the office. ‘Why not go out for an hour?
’ asked that lady. ‘The bus I take goes past Victoria Park, and you can take one back here almost to the door.’
It seemed a good idea. Celine spent an hour or more exploring the park and discovered it to be a pleasant place, and when she got back it was to find Mrs Thatch arranging a tray of tea things in the office. ‘Sister Griffiths doesn’t ’ave ’er tea ’ere,’ she explained, ‘being able to ’ave it in ’er own ’ome. I’ve done yer a nice bit o’ toast.’ She retired to the door. ‘And eat it all, miss, evening is busy.’
Celine ate it all while she went over the jobs she might be expected to do that evening; speed, common sense and patience seemed to be the essentials, and a knowledge of where to find everything. Presently she carried the tray back upstairs, tidied herself in her room and went back to the waiting-room. There was half an hour before the clinic opened and the room was far too warm, even empty. She opened a window or two, put on her overall and settled down to leaf through some of the magazines laid out on the centre table.
The telephone interrupted this; Oliver’s placid voice telling her that he would be late and would she tell Sister Griffiths to get on with what she could. He didn’t say more than that, but rang off, leaving her feeling she was a very small cog in the wheels of his working day.
He was more than half an hour late, but she showed no signs of hurry as he came in. He went straight to the waiting-room, looked round at the harassed mothers and their impatient children, apologised with a smile that took the peevish look off several faces, and went to the surgery.
The clinic was full. Celine, performing her mundane tasks, began to think they would never reach the last patient. She had blown noses, mopped up tears and worse, found lost garments and run to and fro fetching and carrying for Sister Griffiths and occasionally for Oliver. Now she was tired; too tired to think of anything other than supper and bed.
Climbing thankfully between the sheets several hours later, she reflected that that was exactly what Oliver had told her. She frowned; the wretched man was always right—she was asleep before she could think what to do about it.