by Betty Neels
‘Daydreams,’ he murmured, ‘or are you plotting something in that pretty head?’ He glanced at her sharply. ‘Don’t tell me that you disapprove of Guake?’
‘Guake? Of course not, he’s just right for Rimmy, really he is; he’s so kind, and he’ll take such care of her, as long as she’s sure this time.’
He allowed the car to ooze past a bunch of slow moving traffic.
‘The exact antithesis of me,’ he observed cheerfully. ‘And don’t worry about her being sure, he’ll take care of that.’ His voice changed to one of faint mockery. ‘So you feel that being taken care of and treated kindly are essentials of a happy marriage?’
‘But of course they are,’ said Loveday in an astonished voice, knowing even as she said it that personally, she wouldn’t care about either of those attributes. Just to be loved, as long as it was Adam who loved her, would do very nicely. She sighed and he gave a short laugh.
‘My poor girl, can’t you tell your dreams from reality yet? Escape from moonshine, Loveday.’
And wasn’t that exactly what she was trying to do, for was he not himself moonshine in her life? A pity she couldn’t tell him that, she mused bitterly, and sighed again.
‘Do you start work tomorrow?’ she asked him woodenly, and was put out at his laugh.
‘Snubbed,’ he told her cheerfully. ‘You’re in a nasty frame of mind, aren’t you? Yes, I’ll start tomorrow. Thanks to Rimada—and you—I’ve a backlog of cases which will take me a couple of weeks’ hard work to clear.’
An unfair remark which did nothing to douse her cross feelings, but she hadn’t the spirit to cross swords with him, instead she began a stilted conversation about the merits of a temperate climate, a singularly inept subject, seeing that it had begun to rain from a grey, dreary evening sky.
Her vague doubts about her welcome took a concrete form when they arrived at Rimada’s home. The first excited interlocutions over, and an invitation to remain and eat supper having been refused by the two men, Freule de Wolff turned to Loveday.
‘And you, Loveday,’ she wanted to know, ‘no doubt you have your plans made to return to England as soon as possible.’ She smiled without warmth. ‘But of course, you must stay the night here; we can arrange for you to be taken to Schiphol as early as you wish in the morning.’
Loveday blinked and shot a look at the Baron. It was an ‘I told you so’ look, which he received with a bland expression which infuriated her.
‘You won’t mind if we speak Dutch?’ was all he said to her, and without waiting for her reply, addressed his aunt. His voice sounded placid, firm, and very quiet, but it produced a flood of tears on the part of his aunt as well as a chokingly angry retort.
‘My aunt is under some misapprehension,’ he explained smoothly. ‘She seems to think that it was your bad influence which caused Rimada to embark upon her disastrous affair with young Wilde.’
Loveday made an impatient sound. ‘Well, really—do explain, will you?’
‘I have, but with no good result, I’m afraid—you see, it is very difficult for me to deny that you helped Rimada in every way possible. However,’ he went on, still smooth, ‘I have persuaded her to invite you to stay for a few days. Guake will be coming tomorrow evening. I’m sure Rimada will be glad of your company.’
Loveday fumed silently, and although her lovely face looked calm, her eyes held a dangerous sparkle. She said, very low: ‘So we’re on opposite sides once more— I thought…’ She swallowed and began again, this time speaking to her unwilling hostess. ‘I’m sorry if you think that I encouraged Rimada. Perhaps I did. I don’t know any more, and anyway, what would be the use…’ she interrupted herself to say to the impassive man watching her, ‘but I do remember why I got involved, and that was your fault, Professor de Wolff.’ She turned her back on him then and addressed herself to Freule de Wolff.
‘Of course you don’t want me here as a guest, since you think so badly of me. If I may stay the night and leave tomorrow, as soon after breakfast as you can arrange it.’ And at an impatient sound from the Baron she turned round. ‘You can be quiet,’ she told him sharply. ‘I’m very glad to be saying good-bye to you, although you have such a good opinion of yourself that I daresay you won’t believe me.’
She nodded at him and crossed the room to where Rimada and Guake, deep in their own conversation, hadn’t heard a word.
‘Rimmy,’ she said, breaking ruthlessly into their conversation, ‘your mother had been awfully kind and asked me to stay, but I’ve decided to go tomorrow. You won’t mind awfully, will you? It’s been great fun, hasn’t it?’ she stumbled over the lie, ‘but if you’re not coming back to the Royal City, then I’ll go home for a couple of days, get my clothes sorted out and so on.’ She smiled at her friend. The dear girl looked so happy, perhaps at last she knew what she wanted, and now was no time in which to beg her to clear up the misunderstanding her mother was labouring under.
Rimada looked mildly surprised. ‘Loveday, must you? I planned to do some shopping—only a little because I haven’t any money, but it would have been fun. Still, I daresay Mama will come with me.’ She added anxiously: ‘You aren’t peeved? I mean, it wasn’t quite what we had planned.’ She glanced up at Guake, standing placidly silent beside them. ‘You’ll come over when you have a few days? I shall miss hospital life.’
‘Not for long,’ said Guake quietly, and they smiled at each other so that Loveday felt very lonely.
‘I’ve a raging headache,’ she said. ‘Would you mind if I went straight to bed?’
‘But supper?’
‘I’m not hungry. Would your mother excuse me?’
Rimada called something to her mother across the room and then said:
‘Mother says there is a room ready, the one you had last time, and if there’s anything you want, you have only to ring. You’re sure, Loveday?’
‘Yes, thanks, Rimmy.’ She wished them both good night and crossed the room once more and bade her hostess good night too, but to Adam she nodded briefly without a word as she passed him. But he was too quick for her; he was at the door before she could reach it.
‘A pity,’ he said quietly. ‘I wanted to talk to you—to explain; I’ve changed my mind. I’m staying for supper after all.’
She raised her eyebrows and gave him a stony stare, willing herself not to burst into tears. ‘A pity—I’m going to bed, it seems the best thing to do in the circumstances. Besides, I have a headache.’
His blue eyes searched hers. ‘I’ll allow you your mythical headache,’ he told her slowly. ‘You’re upset, but I shall be back tomorrow morning, we’ll have our talk then.’
She had nothing to say, she went past him through the door he was holding for her and upstairs without looking back. In her room she undressed and bathed rapidly, unpacked a jersey trouser suit, repacked her case and counted her money. She had more than sufficient, she was pleased to discover, for the hare-brained scheme she had in mind. She set her little alarm clock for four o’clock in the morning and got into bed, carefully going over her plan to make sure that it was a good one. She went to sleep in the middle of its rehearsal.
Her room was at the end of a passage at the back of the house, while Rimada’s and her mother’s were at the front. The alarm made little noise, she thought it unlikely that anyone would have heard it. She dressed and a little hampered by her case and overnight bag, crept down the stairs.
It was dark and decidedly chilly, and a cup of coffee would have been just the thing, but she didn’t dare try to find the kitchen. The front door was bolted and barred, but its hinges and bolts were well oiled. Loveday left the notes she had written to Rimada and her mother on the hall table and set to work to open the door. A few minutes more and she was outside, walking stealthily towards the gate and thankful to find that it was open. It was getting on for five o’clock and starting to drizzle with rain. She knew that it was two miles to Wassenaar and another five to The Hague; with luck she might find someone to give
her a lift from Wassenaar; there might even be an early morning bus. She set out along the road Adam had so recently taken with the car, her mind resolutely empty of any thoughts other than those concerned with getting her home as quickly as possible.
The sky lightened slowly. By the time she had reached Wassenaar and found a bus stop, there was daylight of sorts, the drizzle had stopped and had given way to a watery sun and a bitter little wind; Loveday felt thankful for the trouser suit as she took her place at the end of the bus queue.
It was still early when she reached The Hague, but there were a good many people about. She got a taxi without much difficulty and once at the station was thankful to find a small café open where she spent her last few Dutch coins on a cup of coffee. There were trains in plenty going to Amsterdam, and because she had no idea how else to go, she persuaded the clerk to take English money for a ticket, and got on the next train. Her case was a nightmare by now and she seemed to have been travelling for ever; it was with a sigh of relief that she hailed a taxi outside the Centrale Station in Amsterdam and asked to be taken to Schiphol.
Once there she enquired, a little anxiously, about a flight to London to be told that yes, there would be one in half an hour and she could have a seat on it. Loveday paid with her fast diminishing money, reflecting that she had had luck on her side so far, handed over her cases and went to join the little knot of people waiting for her flight. It was still not yet nine o’clock. Rimada and her mother seemed miles away, in another world already—Adam’s world, but not hers. She swallowed tears as she boarded the plane.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE flight was a bumpy one. Loveday sat with her eyes closed, swallowing fright, wanting the feel of Adam’s hand on hers, very badly. Half-way across the Channel, she fell asleep and awoke, to her intense relief, in time to hear the hostess uttering the welcome warning to fasten her seat belt.
She went straight to the hospital, organized her clothes, got out the Morris and without seeing anyone at all, drove herself home. Her mother was alone; Phyllis was at school, her father playing golf, and if Mrs Pearce found it surprising to see her elder daughter walk into the house three days before she was due back from her cruise, she concealed it very well, merely remarking that she was delighted to see her; that she had thought that the cruise lasted longer but that she must have been mistaken and expressed the hope that Loveday was going to be home for a few days. Loveday hugged her, grateful for her lack of curiosity and the masterly control which prevented her from asking questions.
‘Things turned out rather differently from what we had expected,’ began Loveday cautiously. ‘I’ll tell you while we have a cup of coffee.’
Sitting cosily at the kitchen table, her mother remarked matter-of-factly: ‘You must have left in the early hours of the morning darling, I do hope you haven’t been travelling all the time—and what about breakfast?’
Loveday skated over these leading questions with a few mutters and began carefully, choosing her words. ‘You see, Rimada wanted to come home sooner than we intended—someone she’s known for ages—such a nice man, was waiting at Madeira when we arrived there and of course Rimmy decided to come back with him. There wasn’t much point in my going on alone…we got back yesterday and although Rimmy’s mother asked me to stay, I thought I’d like to come home for the last few days. You don’t mind?’
Something in her voice made her mother look thoughtfully at her, but beyond voicing a satisfying enthusiasm at the prospect of Loveday being home, even if only for a day or two, she kept silent. Her daughter’s story had been the bare bones of the matter; that would have been obvious to any woman listening to it, but if the dear child didn’t want to talk about it, that was her business. ‘Only,’ thought Mrs Pearce uneasily, ‘I wish she didn’t look so unhappy. Some man, of course.’ She poured second cups and began to ask questions about the cruise.
It was inevitable that sooner or later the Baron was mentioned, and inevitable too that Mrs Pearce should ask, in the most casual way possible, if Loveday liked him.
‘He’s very nice. He’s a good surgeon, quite well known internationally.’
‘Oldish, I daresay,’ mused Mrs Pearce cunningly. ‘After all, he is Rimada’s guardian.’
‘Oh, no, he’s only in his late thirties, he’s…’ Loveday perceived her parent’s trap and changed her words. ‘He’s a very busy man, I believe.’
‘Oh, yes, I see,’ said her mother, who didn’t see at all, only that this was undoubtedly the man her dear daughter was unhappy about. Foreigners—she frowned and then smoothed her face into its usual calm.
‘I’m glad you’re home, darling. I saw a rather nice suit in Tenterden—that boutique on the left going down the hill, I always forget its name. Your father’s no help at all and Phyllis is so modern, bless her. We might run down later on and have a look at it.’
Loveday’s nerves, at twanging point, relaxed under the placid peace and quiet of home; by the time her father got back after tea, she was laughing and talking away, almost, but not quite, her usual self.
She went back to the Royal City two days later, full of good resolutions about forgetting Adam, throwing herself into her work, and concentrating upon the future. But there was no need for her to make any resolutions about her work; the surgeons’ lists were endless, it was like getting a quart into a pint pot. She spent half an hour with the registrars, pointing this fact out to them in a quite ruthless manner, and cutting the lists down to manageable size. Even so, they would all be grossly overworked for the next few weeks.
But she quite welcomed this state of affairs, for it would help her enormously in keeping the second of her resolutions—to forget Adam. Indeed, she succeeded very well with this while she was in theatre, hard at work, but off duty her thoughts tended to harp endlessly upon him, and this despite the fact that she was thinking seriously about her future, although that same future held nothing to interest her, only an endless vista of years, if not at the Royal City, then at some other hospital. Common sense told her that the likelihood of her receiving several offers of marriage before this occurred was more than possible, but she was in no mood to listen to common sense. As far as she was concerned, there were no other men in the world, only Adam.
She had been back a little over a week, when Mr Gore-Symes waylaid her as she was going off duty and begged her in his gentlemanly tones to tart the place up a bit the following morning. ‘And before you ask why,’ he added a trifle testily, ‘let me tell you that there’ll be a posse of surgical talent touring the place; don’t be surprised if they come trooping into the place once the list has started.’
‘To watch that adrenalectomy?’ she nodded. ‘OK, sir, but if they dare to come into my theatre not properly gowned and masked, I’ll throw the lot of them out, talent or no talent!’
He twinkled at her. ‘I’ll give them good warning, Loveday.’ He started away from her and then paused to ask: ‘You’re feeling all right? You’ve looked a bit under the weather since you came back from your holiday.’
She answered briefly: ‘I’m quite all right, thank you, sir—a bit tired, I expect—we’ve been rather pushed, haven’t we?’
He nodded as he went, thinking that it wasn’t like Loveday Pearce to complain, even mildly, about the amount of extra work she was expected to do. He had known times when they had worked twice as hard and never a word from her.
There were several other cases besides the adrenalectomy; they would be at it all day, Loveday calculated. She was off duty that evening, but the first case would take a great deal longer if a parcel of learned gentlemen were going to argue over it, so she might as well resign herself to a snatched hour before supper. A good thing really, she reminded herself; she had had several long letters from Rimada, full of instructions as to what she should do with her possessions still in her room, descriptions of the new clothes she had bought, and—did her dear Loveday know already? She wasn’t penniless after all, not that it mattered because Guake had more
than enough of his own. There was a great deal about Guake; orange blossom was definitely in the air.
And Terry Wilde—he had come back to the hospital before she had, and had gone again on some family matter or other. Now he was back once more; Loveday had bumped into him the evening before on her way over to the home and he had been embarrassingly friendly and had asked her with a knowing little smile if she had changed her mind. ‘Remember I’m here, Loveday,’ he reminded her, and went jauntily on his way, leaving her speechless.
She hadn’t slept very well as a consequence of this meeting and went on duty in a frame of mind hardly calculated to view a theatre full of strange men with equanimity. But her spirits took an upward lift at the sight of the gleaming brass and the shining glass as she entered the theatre unit. There were flowers on her desk too, a little touch for which she had no doubt she had Staff to thank. She checked each room in turn; the sterilizing room where only emergency sterilizing was done, the sluice, the anaesthetic room, the tiny kitchen, the surgeons’ dressing room, the nurses’ cubbyhole, where they crammed their cloaks and handbags and shoes, and then went back to the office. The whole place was in apple pie order, and she only hoped that the posse would notice it; they wouldn’t of course, they would bumble in, crowd round the table, getting horribly in the way, and when they had seen enough, they would mutter vaguely in her direction by way of farewell and bumble out again. Men! thought Loveday savagely, vexed with them all and loving one to distraction.