by Betty Neels
‘Yes,’ said Charity and looked at Jake. There was nothing in his face to show if he minded, if he were interested even. He looked as calm and placid as usual and after a moment he went into his consulting room and closed the door.
There weren’t many patients. When the first one arrived, she took the notes through with the patient’s folder and laid them on his desk. He was sitting doing nothing, leaning back in his chair. He said, ‘I am glad you enjoyed your evening.’
‘I hate Chinese food,’ she told him and watched him laugh.
‘Well, that’s a small, a very small consolation,’ he observed. She glanced away from him and saw that Brenda’s photo was no longer on his desk, and when she looked at him, ‘Perhaps I have been a little premature, but no matter, I am a patient man, willing to let events take their course.’
Charity was quite out of her depth. She said inanely, ‘Oh, yes—well, of course.’ Then got herself out of the room, very cross because she hadn’t the least idea what he was talking about and had made a witless reply worthy of a moron.
Guy Kemble arrived during the morning and, since the last of the patients had come and gone, was ushered straight into the consulting room. Within minutes the professor’s voice over the intercom begged her to bring in coffee. Guy was talking but he broke off as she went in with the tray and the two men eyed her in a manner which made her feel strongly that they had been talking about her. She put down the tray silently, received the professor’s thanks with a chilly nod and took herself back to her typewriter.
The two of them came out together presently and the professor paused long enough to tell her that they would be at Augustine’s for the next hour or so. ‘At what time is my first patient?’ he wanted to know.
‘Two o’clock, Lady Coreston. Then three others before a consultation at half past three—Mrs Brailey, Hampstead.’
He nodded his thanks and Guy said, ‘I’d better say goodbye, Charity—I’m off very soon and I’ve a mass of stuff to see to.’ He leant over the desk and kissed her. ‘Nice knowing you—we’ll look you up when we come to England.’
‘Yes, do that. And all the best for the future.’ She gave him a warm smile, then a brief one frosted round the edges in the direction of Jake, and poised her hands once more over the keys.
Mrs Kemp went out to lunch and the place seemed very quiet. Presently Charity got up and went into the consulting room and took another look at the desk. The photo had gone, there was no doubt about it.
She went for her own lunch when Mrs Kemp came back and when she got back Jake was in his room with the door open. As she sat down at her desk he called through, ‘Charity? Bring in your notebook, will you?’
She took two letters and picked up a few notes to be typed, but before she could reach the door he said quietly, ‘Sit down, Charity. There is no hurry for those.’
There was no help for it, she sat again.
‘Did you know that Guy was going to marry this girl?’
‘Yes. He told me the first time we went out to dinner. He wanted to tell someone about her, you see.’
‘And you weren’t—aren’t in love with him?’
‘Heavens above, no. And if I were,’ she added coldly, ‘it would be my business.’
‘And mine. I don’t know about you, Charity, but I begin to find this business of mixing work with pleasure a little tricky.’
‘I’m not sure…’ she began but he said slowly, ‘I know. I did tell you that I was a patient man. We have to have that talk…’
The phone rang then and he answered it, put the receiver down and got to his feet. ‘My registrar at Augustine’s wants me over there at once. Say all the right things to Lady Coreston if I’m not back.’ He had gone while she was framing a ‘yes, sir’.
He wasn’t back. Exerting all her charm to keep Lady Coreston in a good frame of mind, Charity kept a longing eye on the clock and listened with half an ear to that lady recounting her symptoms yet again. They were quite nasty ones and it seemed likely that the professor would come up with an equally nasty diagnosis, even if it was wrapped up kindly and delivered with a genuine sympathy. When he did come, whatever serious happening had kept him so long at the hospital had been successfully concealed behind his placid manner. Charity handed the patient over to him and went back to her typing. Mrs Kemp interrupted her to tell her in a hissing whisper that they were running half an hour late and had she forgotten that the professor was to go to Mrs Brailey at half past three.
Charity looked at the clock again. ‘If he takes five minutes off each consultation and gets there fifteen minutes late, he could manage it.’
A little muddled, perhaps, but Mrs Kemp understood at once. ‘When Lady Coreston comes out, I’ll hang on to the next one till you’ve had time to pop in and suggest it.’
She slid away, her old-fashioned starched apron crackling, and presently Charity did as she suggested, tapping on his door and whisking in, to pause at the sight of him sitting back in his chair with his eyes shut.
‘Are you ill? Shall I get you something? Tea, coffee? You work too hard.’
The words tumbled out and she would have given worlds to have got them back again as he opened his eyes and smiled at her, his eyebrows lifted in faint mockery. ‘Such concern,’ he observed softly.
She ignored that and repeated her plan in a rough and ready fashion. ‘If I phoned through to Mrs Brailey’s house,’ she offered, ‘and said you’d be fifteen minutes late, unavoidably detained and all that…’
‘I do not know how I got through my days before I encountered you, Charity. By all means go ahead with your scheme, though I’m not promising to keep to your timetable.’
She had to be content with that, and at least she was able to let Mrs Brailey know. The afternoon wore on and she got him away a good deal later than the fifteen minutes she had bargained for. Still, he had gone, seemingly unhurried, laying a little pile of notes on her desk as he passed. She would be late home yet again.
She had finished all she had to do and was making tea for Mrs Kemp and herself when the professor rang to say that he was back at Augustine’s and wouldn’t be in again that evening. She was to go home as soon as she had finished and locked up.
Mrs Kemp, already hatted and coated, drank her tea, gave her opinion that the professor was burning the candle at both ends and nothing good would come of it, and started to hunt in her handbag for change for the bus.
‘What do you mean? The candle at both ends?’
‘Well, love, that girl he’s supposed to be marrying—though I don’t see it happening, mind you—she’s a real night bird, always wanting to go dancing and wining and dining. My Mrs Chubb who obliges twice a week, she’s a friend of Mrs Snook and she lets a word or two drop now and then. They’ve had a bit of a tiff, she thinks, or that Miss Cornwallis is away.’ She sniffed. ‘I wouldn’t give her house room. After his money, I don’t doubt.’
She turned her motherly gaze on Charity. ‘And that nice Dr Kemble? Has he gone back to New Zealand? I quite thought it was a case with him, love; I’m disappointed.’
‘He told me the first time that we met that he had a girl at home. Besides, Mrs Kemp, he is so young I never gave him a thought…’
‘Lost your heart already, haven’t you?’ Mrs Kemp got to her feet. ‘OK, I’m not prying. See you in the morning.’ She beamed in her friendly way. ‘Bye for now.’
Presently Charity tidied her desk, locked up, put on her outdoor things and left too. Outside the front door she discovered that the faint drizzle had turned to an icy rain. It had got much colder, too; under her feet the pavement felt slippery with a thin coating of ice. She made her way to the bus stop, skidding a bit as she went and then stood at the tail end of a long queue, getting very wet as two buses, already full up, went past. She whiled away the time with improbable ideas. The most important one was that Jake should come past the queue and see her, give her a lift and on the way home tell her that he had given up Brenda and had fallen in love
with her instead. She hadn’t decided what she would say when she was brought back to real life by a sharp elbow in her ribs.
‘Get a move on, then,’ said an aggrieved voice behind her. ‘If you want ter get on the bus, then fer ‘eaven’s sake get a move on.’
The bus was full. Charity, sandwiched between two stout ladies with plastic Harrod’s shopping bags and important hats, listened to the conversation which they carried on across her. They had had a nice day, she gathered, finding just the right thing for the cruise and how fortunate that they were both going to Amanda’s dinner party. Amanda, a mutual friend, had got fat; the two ladies had a lovely time discussing her shortcomings and Charity had a lovely time listening to them, until she caught the eye of one of them.
‘Such a pity we couldn’t find a taxi,’ said the owner of the eye, ‘buses are so public. I mean…’ She gave Charity a smouldering look.
‘Of course they are,’ said Charity matter-of-factly. ‘They are public transport.’
The bus stopped to let a handful of people off and two handfuls get on, youths with startling hairstyles and black leather jackets. They had loud voices and the two ladies stopped talking to listen to them.
Probably they meant no harm; they began to jostle each other and then those around them, and when the conductor told them to get off they refused. Reinforced by the driver, he tried again with the bus standing at the side of the road while passengers, only too anxious to get off, were hindered by the boys on the step. No one was prepared for the sudden jolt as the bus started off, leaving the conductor and driver standing on the kerb. The boys were still on the platform, roaring their heads off at the joke.
‘That’s Charlie—fancies ‘iself drivin’ ’e does,’ one of the youths shouted. ‘Ave yer all ’ome in no time.’
It had all happened so quickly and, as luck would have it, there had been no one much to see what had happened. Charity, supported physically at least by the ladies on either side of her, swallowed down a nasty feeling of panic and told herself that it couldn’t last long.
It didn’t; the driver decided to cut across the traffic and go through the traffic lights at the same time as a heavily loaded lorry was, quite legitimately, obeying the green light. Going slowly and driven by a level-headed man, it swerved to avoid the bus, gave it an unavoidable glancing blow and pulled up at the side of the street past the lights. Not so the bus; the boy had lost his head and slammed on the brakes. They came to a sudden lurching stop so that the passengers went in all directions. Charity, welded as it were to her two companions, fell with them into a heap on the floor. They were both screaming in a refined sort of way and one of the important hats had left its owner’s head and was clutched fast in Charity’s hand. For a moment she lay sprawling, but the general surge of the other passengers struggling to their feet got her upright, too. Her fear had given way to ill temper at finding herself in such a situation. She hauled the two ladies to their feet with some difficulty, told them crossly to stop making such a noise, jammed the hat back on its owner’s head and looked around her. There was a great deal of pushing and shoving and people calling each other, and up by the door she saw with relief a policeman’s helmeted head. Several voices were shouting, ‘Don’t panic!’ and there was a slow erratic movement towards the door. Everything was going very nicely as far as she could see from her cramped position. There was glass tinkling, police sirens wailing and a faint smell of burning. She sniffed the air and almost bit her tongue off, so as not to shout ‘Fire!’ Probably it was the brakes, and a good half of the passengers were off the bus by now; to panic wouldn’t help. Besides, she had a sensitive nose; she could be fancying it.
There was a stout man in front of her and a motley collection of housewives, girls going home from the office and one or two idle city gents hedging her in. The stout man suddenly bellowed ‘Fire!’ and there was an instant forward movement from those at the back, naturally enough anxious to get off as quickly as possible. But the bus platform was small and there were quite a few elderly people who couldn’t hurry, fire or no fire. The pressure behind Charity increased and the stout man, turning suddenly, drove an elbow into her eye. It threw her off balance and she was pushed aside. For the moment she didn’t mind; all she wanted to do was to be sick and lie somewhere until the pain was better. There was nowhere to lie; she was carried slowly forward with the rearguard of the passengers and two of the city gents caught her by the arms and trundled her as fast as possible to the door. They were the last to leave the bus. There were a lot of people by now, an ambulance or two, and several police cars.
‘She’ll need a bit of attention,’ she heard someone say and found herself wedged into an ambulance with several other people, all rather the worse for wear. ‘I am quite able to go home,’ she protested to a policeman urging her in.
He studied her rapidly swelling eye. ‘A bit of treatment won’t come amiss,’ he told her kindly, ‘and then you’ll be able to go home.’
The ambulance took them to Augustine’s. Charity, the last to get in, was the first to get out. The professor, crossing the courtyard to his car, had a splendid view of her, standing obediently where the ambulance had deposited her. His firm mouth twitched into a faint, tender smile but there was concern in his eyes. He reached her just before the ambulance man reached her. ‘My poor darling, whatever has happened?’ And then, ‘It’s all right, she’s been on the staff here—I’ll take her over.’
His arm felt comforting as he led her into the Accident Centre. He lifted a finger and a staff nurse came hurrying over to him. ‘My secretary—seems to have got involved in an accident. I’ll take a look at her—that’s a nasty eye. Can you be spared, Staff?’
‘Yes, sir. It’s a bus crash, some boys drove off with it and crashed it. No one is badly hurt.’
‘Good. Let’s get Charity’s coat off and make her comfortable on the couch while I have a word with Sister.’
Sister came back with him and sent Staff back to join the junior sister and the other nurse. She knew Charity by sight and tut-tutted in a motherly way when she saw the eye, wondering why Professor Wyllie-Lyon, usually so placid and unflappable, was so concerned. She scented romance although there was nothing in his manner to indicate that. His soft-voiced directions were delivered in his usual calm way but there was no doubt that Charity’s one good eye was fastened upon his face with a quite painful intensity.
She was examined gently and her rapidly closing eye treated, and then she was helped off the couch again. She felt grubby and untidy and shaky but she thanked them both and started out of the cubicle. ‘A taxi?’ suggested Sister.
‘I’ll take Charity home,’ said the professor, adding, ‘Many thanks, Sister.’
There were still people in the Accident Centre having cuts and bruises treated. There were several policemen there, too. The professor gave one of them her name and address and took her out to the car.
‘I’m perfectly able…’ began Charity.
She was ignored, stuffed gently into the front seat and told to close her remaining good eye, something she was glad to do. She opened it when the car stopped and sat up with a jerk. ‘This is your house,’ she pointed out.
‘Yes.’ An unsatisfactory answer, but her head ached and she couldn’t be bothered to pursue the matter. He put an arm round her and led her indoors to be met by Snook, who took one look and went to fetch Mrs Snook.
The professor sat her down in a chair and she leaned back with her eye closed again, not caring what was to happen next. She heard his voice clearly enough though.
‘You will stay here, Charity. Mrs Snook will help you to bed. I am about to ring your aunt and ask her to come here to be with you until you are fit to go home.’
‘I’m all right,’ she mumbled.
‘My dear girl, have you seen that eye?’ He sounded amused.
And after that she didn’t remember much; being undressed by a kindly Mrs Snook, shrouded in a roomy nightgown and eased gently into a warm bed an
d bidden to drink her hot milk like a good girl. Headache or not, she was asleep in no time at all. The professor, coming in to take a look at her, studied her swollen reddened eye and then bent and kissed her gently. Then he went downstairs to await Aunt Emily, whom Snook had gone to fetch with the car. He had had a word with Charity’s father, too, assuring him gravely that Charity would be perfectly safe with him.
‘Well, of course she will,’ said Mr Graham testily, ‘I’m not a half blind fool.’
CHAPTER NINE
CHARITY SLEPT ALL NIGHT and woke to find Aunt Emily and the professor standing at the foot of the bed, looking at her. The damaged eye was still swollen and shut but the good one was bright enough.
‘Better?’ asked the professor and, when she nodded, ‘Good. You will stay in bed today, Charity. When you have had a cup of tea, I will come and take a look at that eye.’ He smiled and then went away and her aunt said, ‘Such a kind, good man. I have the room next to this one, love, and every possible thing I could need. I must say it was a shock when he told us, but you are in the best possible hands. Here is your tea,’ she added unnecessarily and Charity obediently drank it, watched by her aunt and Mrs Snook.
‘What’s the time?’ she asked, and then, ‘He’ll be late—there is a patient coming at nine o’clock…’
The two ladies made soothing noises and disappeared and the professor was there instead. He came and sat on the edge of the bed and examined her eye with care. ‘Painful?’ he wanted to know. ‘Headache still?’ He produced an ophthalmoscope. ‘This is going to be uncomfortable. I want to make sure that there is no damage to your eye.’
When he had finished he said, ‘Good girl. Everything is as it should be. We’ll deal with the swelling and you will be fine in a few days. You will have to wear a patch for a day or two once the swelling has gone down.’