by Betty Neels
Miss Flute said drily, ‘How could that be possible?’
Claribel frowned. She was a sensible girl, aware that she had more than her share of good looks, and she was accustomed to people remarking on that, but she had no vanity and was quite uncaring of the admiring glances she drew. All the same, for some reason Mr van Borsele’s lack of interest in her had irked her. ‘Perhaps he hates blondes…or he’s a misogynist.’
Miss Flute gave a hoot of laughter. ‘My dear girl, the grapevine has it that he is out and about at all the best restaurants with various lovelies.’
‘Good luck to him,’ said Claribel and went off in search of Mrs Snow. Mrs Snow was elderly, stout and chatty; Claribel rather liked her. She had tripped in her own kitchen and broken an arm and, having passed through Casualty, X-ray and Mr Shutter’s Out-patients, was now in the hands of the physio department. She was a chatty soul and at each session related an instalment of her home life while Claribel massaged her and egged her on to do the exercises she was so loath to do.
‘I seen a nice young man as I come in,’ she observed as Claribel began on the arm. ‘Getting out of ’is car, ’e was—one of them Rolls, ever so posh. ’E went into Outpatients.’
She fixed Claribel with a beady eye; having set a sprat to catch a mackerel, she was hopeful of a good catch.
‘He’s taking over from Mr Shutter for a week or two. You’re due to see him next week, aren’t you? Mr Shutter is having a holiday.’
‘’E deserves it. ’E must be sick ter death of other people’s bones.’ Mrs Snow cringed away from Claribel’s gentle fingers. ‘Ow, that ’urts. Is ’e nice, the new man?’
‘I’m sure he will be very good at his job,’ said Claribel sedately. ‘Now, Mrs Snow, let me see you lift that arm.’
The day wore on with its unending stream of patients. By five o’clock Claribel was bone-weary. Not that she minded; she liked her work and it was satisfying to see arms and legs returned to normal. Of course there was a hard core of elderlies with arthritis who were more or less permanently on the books, but they still benefited, even if they made little progress.
There was a general rush to go home once the last patient had gone, and a good deal of cheerful chatter since it was Friday and the department closed down until Monday morning. They left in a cheerful bunch, pausing to say goodbye to Miss Flute as she got into her Mini and then streaming across the hospital forecourt, intent on getting their various buses. Claribel, intent on getting home for the weekend, raced away to the nearest bus-stop, her mind already dwelling happily on the peace and quiet of her parents’ home in Wiltshire, so that she failed to see Mr van Borsele’s Rolls at the entrance, waiting to join the rush of traffic in the street. She had in fact forgotten all about him.
She went home once a month, an undertaking which called for a strict routine the moment she got into her flat. Shower and change, feed the cats, stow them in their travelling basket, snatch up her already packed weekend bag and get a taxi, not always easy, especially in her unfashionable corner of London. Waterloo station wasn’t all that distance away, but too far to walk with the cats and her bag, and this evening she was later than usual.
She reached the end of Meadow Road and not a taxi in sight, although there was more chance of one in Stamford Street. She paused on the corner by the few rather tatty shops and looked hopefully in either direction. Traffic streamed past but every taxi was occupied; she would have to try for a bus if one came along, although the nearest stop to the station was several minutes away from the station itself.
She didn’t see the Rolls, going the other way, slow, do a U-turn and slide to a halt beside her.
‘Get in quickly,’ begged Mr van Borsele, ‘I’m breaking any number of regulations.’ He had nipped out smartly, taken the basket from her and put it on the back seat, and hurried her round the car into the seat beside his. ‘Where to?’
Claribel caught her breath. ‘Waterloo Station. My goodness, you do pop up in unexpected places, don’t you?’ She added quickly, like a small girl who had forgotten her manners, ‘Thank you very much. I haven’t much time to catch my train.’
Mr van Borsele grunted and joined the steady stream of traffic, weaving in and out of slower vehicles in a rather unnerving fashion.
‘You’re going very fast,’ Claribel pointed out severely.
He said irritably, ‘I was under the impression that you wished to catch a train, or was that just an excuse to get a lift?’
Claribel drew such a deep breath she almost exploded.
‘Well, of all the nerve…’ She remembered suddenly to whom she was speaking; one showed a proper respect towards consultant surgeons. ‘You stopped the car and told me to get in.’
‘Indeed I did. I don’t remember inviting you to criticise my driving.’
She gave his unfriendly profile an almost motherly look. He was touchy; had a tiff with his girlfriend, perhaps. With a brother only a few years younger than herself she was familiar with the sudden snappish reply.
She said reasonably, ‘I’m not criticising you at all, Mr van Borsele—I’m very grateful to you.’
He grunted again. Hardly a sparkling conversationalist, she reflected, and prepared to get out as he pulled in at the station’s main entrance. She still had almost ten minutes but there would be a queue for tickets. She had a hand on the door handle when he said, ‘Wait,’ and got out and opened the door, retrieving the cats and her bag from the back of the car and strode into the station. Outside the vast ticket office he asked, ‘Where to?’
‘Oh, Tisbury.’ She put out a hand for the basket and her bag and found she was holding them both and watching his vast back disappearing into the queue. Her protesting, ‘Mr van Borsele,’ fell on deaf ears.
He was back within five minutes, which left three minutes to get on to the train. He took the cats and her bag from her, bustled her past the platform gate, found her an empty seat opposite two respectable matrons, put the cats on the floor beside her with her bag on the rack, wished her a coldly polite goodbye and had gone while she was on the point of thanking him yet again. She remembered then that he had paid for her ticket and she had forgotten to repay him. What must he think of her? She went pink at the thought and the matrons eyed her with interest, no doubt scenting romance.
She would have to pay him when she got back on Monday; better still, she could put the money in the consultant’s letter rack with a polite note. Not that he deserved any politeness. Not a man to do things by halves, she mused as the train gathered speed between the rows of smoke-grimed houses; she had been handled as efficiently as an express parcel. And with about as much interest.
She occupied the train journey composing cool observations to Mr van Borsele when next they met, calculated to take him down a peg.
Less than two hours later she was on the platform at Tisbury station being hugged by her father and then hurried to the family car, an elderly estate car in constant use, for he was a solicitor of no mean repute and much in demand around the outlying farms and small estates. Enoch and Toots were settled in the back with Rover, the family labrador, and Mr Brown, without loss of time, drove home.
His family had lived in the same house for some considerable time. It was a typical dwelling of the district: mellowed red brick, an ancient slate roof and plenty of ground round it. A roomy place, with a stable converted to a garage and a couple of rather tumbledown sheds to one side, it stood a mile outside the little town, its garden well tended. It had never had a name but was known locally as Brown’s place.
Its owner shot up the short drive and Claribel jumped out to fling open the door and hurry inside, leaving her father to bring in the animals. Mrs Brown came out of the kitchen as she went in; a smaller version of Claribel, her fair hair thickly silvered but with a still pretty face.
Mother and daughter embraced happily and Claribel said: ‘Oh, it’s marvellous to be home again. What’s for supper?’
‘My potato soup, shepherd’s pie and upsi
de-down pineapple pudding.’ She eyed her daughter. ‘Been working hard, darling? We’ll have a glass of sherry, shall we? Here’s your father.’
Enoch and Toots were used to their weekend trips; they ate the food put ready for them and sat themselves down before the Aga while Rover settled close by and Claribel and her parents sat at the kitchen table drinking their sherry and catching up on the news.
‘Sebastian has a new girlfriend,’ said Mrs Brown. ‘She’s a nurse, not finished her training yet. He brought her down for the weekend—we like her, but of course he’s young yet…’
‘He’s been qualified for a year, Mother.’
‘Yes, dear, I know, but he seems so much younger than you.’
‘Well, he is—three years, almost.’
There was a small silence. Claribel had had her share of young men but she had never been serious with any one of them; her mother, without saying a word, nevertheless allowed her anxiety to show. Her beautiful daughter was twenty-eight years old and it was inconceivable that she wouldn’t marry. Each time Claribel went home, her mother contrived to bring the talk round to the young men she had met and always Claribel disappointed her.
To change the trend of her parent’s obvious thoughts, Claribel said cheerfully, ‘I almost missed the train. Luckily the orthopaedic man who is standing in for Mr Shutter happened to drive past and gave me a lift.’
‘Nice?’ asked her mother hopefully.
‘No. Very terse and rude. He’s Dutch.’
‘What does he… Is he nice-looking?’ asked Mrs Brown.
‘Very. In an arrogant sort of way.’
‘I don’t see that his looks matter as long as he got Claribel to the station. Very civil of him,’ observed her father.
He hadn’t been civil, but Claribel let that pass. She finished her sherry and they went across the stone-flagged hallway to the dining-room, handsomely furnished in a shabby way with massive pieces inherited from her mother’s family. The talk was all of local events while they ate and when they had washed up and had coffee, Claribel took herself off to bed; it had been a long day, rather more tiring than usual.
‘I wonder what that Dutchman’s like?’ mused her mother over her knitting.
Mr Brown had a good book. ‘I don’t see that it matters; Claribel doesn’t like him.’
Mrs Brown did a row in silence. ‘We’ll see,’ she said. ‘She hadn’t a good word to say for him—a good sign.’
Her husband sighed. ‘Mr dear, how you do run on. Besides, he’s a consultant. Presumably hardly likely to take up with a physiotherapist.’
‘Claribel is beautiful,’ said her mother simply, as though that put an end to the argument.
The weekend went too fast; it always did. Claribel biked into Tisbury in the morning on various errands for her mother and to waste a good deal of time chatting with various friends she met there. In the afternoon she and her father took Rover for a walk along the bridle paths, which were short cuts leading to the villages around the little town. The weather had improved but it was wet underfoot. Claribel, in wellies, an old tweed skirt and an even older quilted jacket, had tied a scarf round her golden hair and borrowed her mother’s woolly gloves. They got back for tea glowing with fresh air.
Sunday morning was taken up with church and leisurely chats after the service. Claribel had a lot of friends, most of them married now, and several with weddings in the offing. She was to be a bridesmaid at two of them and wandered off into the churchyard with the brides-to-be, to sit on a handy tombstone and discuss clothes.
The day wasn’t too long enough. She collected Enoch and Toots, packed her bag and in the early evening was driven to Tisbury once more, very much inclined to agree with her mother’s remark that it was a pity that she couldn’t stay at home. But there was no hospital nearer than Salisbury and no vacancies there. Besides, she had to stand on her own two feet and make her own life. She might not marry; she had had chances enough but none of them had been right for her. She wasn’t sure what kind of man she wanted for a husband but she supposed that she would know when she met him.
Meadow Road looked more dingy than ever as the taxi drove down it, and her little semi-basement seemed unbearably small and dark even with all the lights on. She made tea, fed the cats and turned on the gas fire. She always felt like this when she came back after a weekend at home; in a day or two she would settle down.
She got out paper and envelopes, and wrote a stiff little note to Mr van Borsele, enclosing a cheque for her railway fare. In the morning she would take it to the lodge and ask a porter to put it in the pigeonholes reserved for the consultants and that would be the end of that.
She went to bed presently and fell asleep at once, to wake in the night and wish that it wouldn’t be the end; he was such a thoroughly unpleasant man that it would be a pleasure to reform him. She thought of several ways of doing this before she slept again.
CHAPTER TWO
CLARIBEL was disappointed that she wouldn’t be doing a ward round during the week; Mrs Green was back and there was a backlog of patients to deal with. The first few days of the week flew by and not once did she cast eyes on Mr van Borsele. She had handed in her note and the cheque and if she had expected an acknowledgement she was doomed to disappointment. Not that she had any wish to see him again, or so she told herself.
Not only was it a busy week, but the hospital was to hold its bi-annual bazaar at the weekend. It seemed a most unsuitable time for this, but since for very many years it had taken place on that particular Saturday, no one had considered changing it. Everyone was expected to help in some way. Minor royalty would be opening it, and the lecture hall would be turned into an indoor fair, the more expensive goods well to the forefront, the jumble and secondhand books at the back. Claribel was helping at the jumble stall; only the young and active were asked to do so for the local inhabitants relied upon it for a large proportion of their wardrobes and there was keen and sometimes ill-natured competition for clothes contributed by the patrons of the hospital.
The bazaar opened at two o’clock sharp and Miss Flute, marshalling her staff, reminded them to be there at one o’clock and not a minute later. Which meant that Saturday morning was rather a rush, what with having to shop for the weekend, clean the flat and do the washing. Claribel got into a needlecord skirt and a knitted jumper—the jumble stall caught all the icy draughts—tied her hair in a scarf, put on a quilted jacket and went to catch her bus. It was a dreadful waste of a Saturday afternoon; she would have preferred to stay home with the cats, reading and making scones for tea.
The lecture hall was a hive of activity; she went straight to her stall and began to sort clothes into suitable piles. They wouldn’t last long like that but the first bargain hunters would be able to snap up their choice without too much tossing of garments to and fro. There were two other girls on the stall, both good friends of hers, and, ready with ten minutes to spare, they had a pleasant gossip until a sudden subdued roar told them that the doors had been opened.
No one could buy anything until the bazaar had been officially opened. Minor royalty arrived exactly on time, made a brief speech, received the bouquet the hospital director’s small daughter had been clutching, and declared the affair open, the signal for a concerted rush to the various stalls. Trade was brisk; the more élite toured the hall in the wake of royalty, buying beribboned coat hangers, lace pincushions and homemade jams, while the rest surged towards the jumble and secondhand books.
Claribel did a brisk trade; the mounds of clothing, hats and shoes disappeared rapidly. She knew a good many of her customers and wasn’t surprised to see Mrs Snow edging her way along the stall, her arms already full of garments and a couple of hats.
‘There you are, ducks,’ said that lady cheerfully. ‘Got a nice haul ’ere. ’Ere, I say, that nice young feller I told you about—’e’s over there with the nobs.’ She waved a cluttered hand towards the centre of the hall and Claribel perforce followed its direction. Sure enough,
there was Mr van Borsele, head and shoulders above everyone else, talking to one of the hospital committee. He looked at her across the crowded hall and, although he gave no sign of having seen her, she turned her head at once. She took great care not to look around her again and indeed she had little time; by four o’clock she longed for a cup of tea but trade was too brisk for any of them to leave the stall. When the last customer had gone, an hour later, there was almost nothing to pack up and they made short work of it, grumbling among themselves in a good-natured way because their precious Saturday had been infringed upon. But as Miss Flute had told them, it had been well worth it; they had made a good deal of money and the hospital would be the richer by another kidney machine. They trooped off to wash their hands and do their faces and dispersed in a chorus of goodbyes. Miss Flute was standing by the door talking to Mr van Borsele as Claribel and several of the other girls reached it. She stretched out a hand as Claribel went by so that she had to stop.
‘Claribel, Mr van Borsele has kindly offered to give me a lift home; he will have to go past Meadow Road and says it’s no trouble to drop you off.’
Claribel said quickly, ‘Oh, please don’t bother—there will be plenty of buses.’
‘No bother,’ said Mr van Borsele smoothly. ‘Shall we go? I’m sure you must both want your tea.’
She found herself sitting behind him, watching Miss Flute chatting away with surprising animation. They were on the best of terms, she reflected peevishly, and only occasionally did Miss Flute address some remark to her over a shoulder.
Miss Flute lived alone in a tiny mews flat behind Charing Cross station and Mr van Borsele got out and opened the door for her and saw her safely inside before coming back to his car.
He opened the door and studied Claribel. ‘Come in front?’ he enquired so pleasantly that she had no choice but to get out and get in again beside him. He shut the door on her with the air of a man who had got his way, got in beside her and drove back along the Embarkment, over Waterloo Bridge and into Stamford Street. It had turned into a dull afternoon and Meadow Road, when they reached it, looked drab. He stopped outside her flat and turned to look at her.