by Betty Neels
Old Mrs Golightly was in her early seventies, and still a spry old lady. She was small and thin, so that Judith towered over her, but although they were very different in appearance, they saw eye to eye about a great many things. She called now from the sitting room as Molly admitted Judith, bidding her to go in at once and have a glass of sherry before lunch.
Judith did so and was greeted by her grandmother, lovingly tart. ‘Measles at your age!’ she observed. ‘How is it you never had them at the proper time? Lost some weight too, I see, though you don’t look too bad, I must say. How is your Uncle Tom? It’s time he paid me a visit.’
Judith bent to kiss her grandparent. ‘He’s very well, working much too hard; holidays just don’t seem to matter to him.’
‘Pour the sherry, child, and sit down—you can go up to your room later. Been up all night, I suppose?’
‘Well, yes. But I’m wide awake at the moment, Granny.’
Mrs Golightly shook her head. ‘It’s not a natural life at all. Time you married, Judith. Surely to goodness you’ve met someone by now. How old are you? Twenty-seven? High time you settled down and had a family. I never did believe in women working.’
Judith sipped her sherry. There had never been any need for Granny to work. She had married young, slipping naturally enough into the roles of wife and mother, secure from every angle. Even now she lived in comfort with the faithful Molly and sufficient income to allow her the small luxuries of life. Judith sighed soundlessly. It wasn’t quite the same nowadays—she would be expected to work, she supposed, at least for a year or so after marriage—everyone did nowadays. A home, she thought wistfully, and a husband who would work his fingers to the bone rather than let her work, even part-time, and children, growing up in a household where Mother was a permanent fixture. She shook the thought from her head. She was getting old-fashioned, the sherry was making her sentimental.
‘I had a letter from your Uncle Tom,’ her grandmother’s brisk voice broke the small silence. ‘He enjoyed having you, Judith—said you were a good girl and did a great deal of work. Said he wished he could have taken you out and about more; he seems to have plenty of friends too.’
‘Yes, I met some of them.’ For the life of her she couldn’t stop herself telling her grandmother about the dinner party at Charles Cresswell’s house, although she made up for that by saying: ‘Of course, I didn’t like him—intolerant and rude and arrogant; it’s funny how you dislike some people on sight…’
‘He disliked you too?’
‘Oh, yes,’ Judith put down her glass, ‘he can’t stand the sight of me.’
‘How very fortunate that you are unlikely to see him again,’ remarked her grandmother drily. ‘He seems to have upset you a good deal.’
‘Upset me? Of course not, Granny. Nigel’s proposed again,’ she added.
Old Mrs Golightly knew all about Nigel. ‘You refused him, of course?’
‘Yes, I—Granny, do you think I’m too fussy? Am I going to end up a dried-up old spinster?’
‘No, my dear, you’ll marry within the year, I have no doubt.’ She nodded her head again. ‘And not to that tiresome Nigel.’
Judith gave her an indulgent smile. Old ladies got fancies from time to time, and if it amused her grandmother to make arbitrary statements like that one, it did no harm.
She ate Molly’s well cooked lunch with a healthy appetite and then curled up in one of the large shabby chairs in the sitting-room. Her grandmother liked a nap in the afternoons, and there were several books which looked interesting. Judith opened the first of them and was asleep herself within two minutes.
Her two days went quickly although she did nothing much, content to potter in the tiny garden, do a few errands for her grandmother, change the library books and sit and gossip. It was on her last day that she saw an article about Charles Cresswell in a newspaper, lauding him to the skies for his scholarship and brilliant research. The book he was at present writing would be a world-wide success, it was predicted, and once it was published he was to embark upon a research into mediaeval manuscripts. He was, said the article, very modest about his work and disliked being interviewed—almost a recluse, stated the writer. Judith cast the paper from her with a snort of derision; what was so wonderful about twelfth-century England, anyway? And anyone who wanted to could go to the British Museum and look at dozens of manuscripts. The idea entered her head that she might do just that herself. She had an extra night due to her and Sister Reed was back on duty. She began to work out the off duty in her head. There was no reason why she shouldn’t add the extra day on to her usual nights off; it wasn’t take-in week and anyway, each night was as busy as the last, so it would make no difference, for it would be inconvenient whichever she might choose. When she got back to the hospital she added one more night to her three off duty and since no one queried it, arranged to spend a day in London before driving home.
It would have been sensible to have gone to bed for a few hours when she got off duty, but for the moment at any rate she felt wide awake; besides, she would have a night’s sleep before she drove home. She showered and changed into a cotton knitted dress and little jacket, made up her tired, beautiful face, piled her bright hair into a careless knot, found sandals and shoulder bag and went to queue for a bus. It was a pleasant change to feel free to do exactly what she liked with her day. Usually, if she went out in the mornings before going to bed, it was for necessary shopping or just for exercise. The bus was exasperatingly slow. She would walk back, she decided, but first of all, when she had spent an hour or two in the British Museum, she would have lunch somewhere.
She got out at last and crossed the courtyard, mounted the steps and went into the cool interior. It was ages since she had been there and she had forgotten how vast it was. She asked an attendant where the medieval manuscripts were housed and wandered off in their general direction, wasting a good deal of time on the way, her attention caught by displays of pottery and jewellery, weapons and ancient stone statues. When she finally arrived she saw at a glance that what she had intended to be a casual hour or so glancing at twelfth-century relics was going to turn into an earnest study of several hours in length. She wasn’t sure where to begin; the Magna Carta seemed a fair start, except that it wasn’t twelfth-century. She hung over the glass case for a long time, trying to understand it, and then passed on the coins and seals. She was studying the Great Seal of Henry the Second when she felt that she was being watched. On the other side of the glass case was Charles Cresswell, looking at her with a nasty little smile on his handsome face. He said softly:
‘Now I wonder why you’re here, Judith Golightly? A genuine interest in the mediaeval? Or plain female curiosity about my work?’
She said with instant honesty. ‘Curiosity mostly, but now I’m here interest too.’
He looked surprised and the smile disappeared. He said seriously: ‘Why, I do believe you mean that.’
‘Well, of course I do.’ She turned away from him and became engrossed in a Saxon bucket with bronze bands, only to find that he was there beside her, pointing out the relief work on the bands, telling her the possible date where it was made and what it was used for.
‘Very interesting,’ said Judith, ‘but don’t let me keep you—I’m only browsing.’
‘Then I shall browse with you.’ No ‘if I may’, she thought crossly, and would have made a snappish retort, only he had already begun to lead the way to another section given over entirely to ecclesiastical objects. Indeed he took her arm and forced her to stop before a model of a twelfth-century church and began to point out its characteristics. ‘A simple two-cell interior,’ he told her, ‘with an apse large enough to take the altar, slit windows, of course…’ and when Judith asked: ‘Why of course?’ said impatiently: ‘They were troubled times—and two doors in the north and south walls. From this grew the early medieval church. We can learn a great deal from the study of churches up and down the country—it’s an absorbing topic…’
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He had a pleasant deep voice, which combined with the hushed surroundings and the relics of what must have been another world had a soporific effect upon Judith. His voice took on a dreamlike quality, coming and going in waves, and she was forced to keep her eyes very wide open so that they shouldn’t shut tight. She managed that all right, but she couldn’t for the life of her stop a yawn; even smothered with a hasty hand it was all too obvious. Professor Cresswell paused in the middle of a fluent description of animal and plant symbols in churches and said in a quite different voice, cold and silky and sneering: ‘My apologies Miss Golightly—I bore you.’ He turned on his heel and walked away, leaving her shocked into instant wakefulness.
She went and sat down on a hard wooden bench against a wall after that. Her morning was quite spoilt, she longed above all things for a cup of coffee and bed. She closed her eyes and dozed off.
She didn’t sleep for long, and when she woke, Charles Cresswell was sitting beside her, reading The Times. She sat up with a start and he said without looking up from his newspaper, ‘You are a most abominable girl, you should have told me that you had been up all night.’
‘Why?’
He ignored that. ‘And why the British Museum? Hardly the place to visit with wits addled by lack of sleep!’
‘My wits are not addled,’ declared Judith, ‘and I can see no reason why I should tell you anything.’ She rather spoilt it by adding: ‘I didn’t know you were going to be here.’
‘I’m surprised that you knew me—I had the impression at our last meeting that your greatest wish was to forget me as quickly as possible.’
‘Well, actually it was, but I was curious about your work.’
He looked as though he was going to laugh. ‘You’re a very truthful girl, among other things.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Shall we have lunch together? in a mutual dislike if you wish.’ He smiled so disarmingly that she nodded, aware that she was hungry as well as tired.
‘All right,’ and then: ‘That’s twice,’ she observed.
He knew what she meant. ‘Yes, but the surroundings were pleasanter, were they not?’
‘When I think about it it doesn’t seem quite true. Are your dogs with you?’
‘No—they’re happy at Hawkshead and I’m never away for long.’ He took her hand and pulled her gently to her feet. ‘There’s a small place near here, very quiet—no one will mind if you nod off over the soup.’
It was only a few minutes’ walk and the fresh air revived her. They had a small table in the window, and without asking her he ordered an iced soft drink, enquired as to whether she disliked anything in particular and ordered for them both—iced melon, grilled sole and a salad and coffee. Judith was grateful that he didn’t press her to have a drink. The food had revived her still further and she had better get back while she was feeling wide awake again. They sat over their coffee, talking amicably enough, indeed she found herself telling him all about her home, her pale face wistful so that he asked casually: ‘Why do you stay at Beck’s? I’m sure you have an excellent job there, but there must be other equally good posts.’
‘I’m in a rut,’ she told him. ‘It needs something to dig me out—you know, something dramatic or urgent, so that I can resign without giving it a second thought.’
He eyed her thoughtfully. ‘But preferably with a job to go to.’
‘Oh, yes, I have to have a job.’
‘Unless you get married?’ His voice was casual.
An unwanted picture of Nigel floated before her eyes and she frowned. ‘That’s unlikely.’
He appeared to lose interest. ‘Are you going back to Beck’s? I’m going that way myself, I’ll drop you off.’
Judith was too tired to refuse. He hailed a taxi and she got in thankfully and sat silently until it stopped at the hospital gates.
‘Thank you for my lunch,’ she told him politely. ‘I hope your book is a great success,’ she added for good measure, ‘with rave notices. And please give Uncle Tom my love when you see him.’ She sighed very softly. ‘The roses in your garden are very lovely—I can’t forget them.’
He got out and stood beside her, looking down at her sleepy face with no expression at all on his own. ‘Quite lovely,’ he said, and took the hand she held out.
‘And I’m sorry about the yawn,’ said Judith. ‘As a matter of fact you were being very interesting. When I’ve had a good sleep, I expect I’ll remember it all.’
‘I shall remember too,’ he told her gravely, a remark which popped into her head just as she was on the point of sleep and which she couldn’t quite understand. She was too tired to bother anyway.
CHAPTER FOUR
JUDITH WASN’T SURE why she didn’t tell her mother that she had had lunch with Charles Cresswell. On her next visit home she described her morning at the British Museum at some length, but left him out, and when Mrs Golightly asked where she had had her lunch, replied with limited truth that she had gone to some little place close to the Museum.
‘Rather dull on your own,’ observed her mother, who where Judith was concerned had a kind of second sight and felt that she was being put off. Judith agreed readily enough; it would have been very dull on her own. So with this her mother had to be content, though she did drag Professor Cresswell’s name into the conversation from time to time in the hope that Judith might let slip some remark about him. She was a firm believer in romance, true love and living happily ever after, and it seemed to her that Judith and the Professor, once they had got over their dislike of each other, might make a delightful pair. Grandchildren, thought Mrs Golightly happily, coming to visit her for the school holidays—something to look forward to. She found an article about the Professor in one of the loftier magazines and left it lying around, opened at the right page, and watched to see how Judith would react. Judith, a loving daughter but very well aware of her mother’s wiles, ignored it.
She drove back to London under a sky heavy with the threat of a storm, but she was comfortably in her room, changing to go on duty, by the time it broke. It was still raging when she went along to take the report of the day’s happenings in the Surgical Wing, with thunder crashing and rumbling and lightning streaking through the window as she sat down to the résumé left for her. The Ward Sisters would already have given their reports to the various night nurses on each ward and presently she would start on her round and read them all for herself, but now she digested the bones of the happenings on them, knowing that only the most serious of the cases would be in her own report. She had finished reading about the main wards and was beginning on the private patients’ corridor when her eye caught a name. Cresswell—Lady Cresswell. Admitted with suspected leukaemia, aged sixty-one, living at an upper crust address in Belgravia; nearest relation: Professor Charles Cresswell. There were two telephone numbers, one a London number, the other, if her memory served her well, the number she dialled when she telephoned Uncle Tom. ‘Oh, lord,’ said Judith, ‘of all the infuriating things to happen!’ At least she was on night duty, which meant she would never see Charles Cresswell.
She started on her rounds, dismissing the matter from her mind for the time being. There was enough to attend to in the Men’s Surgical ward where there had been four admissions, two of them in poor shape. Half way round, she stopped to have coffee with Sister Reed, compare notes, discuss the patients worrying them, and who was to do what during the night, and then she went on her way again. At least there weren’t any theatre cases, which meant that Sister Reed was free to take over her share of the drug checking.
There were ten private rooms beyond the main women’s surgical ward, lining one side of a wide corridor overlooking the inner courtyard of Beck’s. They were pleasant, as pleasant as a hospital room could look, and had the added advantage of a separate entrance at the other end of the corridor so that visitors could come and go without disturbing the main wards. Judith dismissed the staff nurse who had accompanied her on her round so far; there was enough work to do without he
r keeping her unnecessarily, and the private patients sometimes took up a good deal of time—not being in the wards they had little idea of the constant round of chores going on, and while Judith found their leisurely attitude towards hospital routine irksome when she was busy, she hardly blamed them for it. After all, they were paying handsomely for their beds and treatment and for the most part they were pleasant, co-operative and grateful.
Of course, there was always the odd man out—and he was in the first room. She tapped on the door, and went in, sighing inwardly. Mr Forsythe had an ulcer, brought on by his obsession for making money. Even here in his hospital bed, he read the financial papers, spent hours telephoning those he employed to help him amass even more of it, and in between lived on stomach powders and a miserable steamed fish diet. No amount of arguing had made him agree to have an operation, and as far as she could see, they were stuck with him forever. She went over to the bed, wished him a cheerful good evening and listened patiently to his complaints. Most of them were to do with his stocks and shares going down instead of up, and any questions she might have managed to put were impatiently waved aside. His ulcer was a nuisance, but quite secondary to his need to make more money. She coaxed him to take something to make him sleep and went on to the next patient.
Mr King, unlike his neighbour, had no interest in money, for he had very little of it, but he had a loving family who shared the burden of his hospital fees and brought him the cassettes of the classical music he loved so that he could play them incessantly, something he wouldn’t have been able to do in the main wards. Judith listened to the last bit of Fauré’s Requiem with deep satisfaction, offered necessary pills and went on her way, feeling sad. Mr King was a dear old man and wasn’t going to get better. She knew that, so did his family, so did he, and there was very little to be done about it.