by Betty Neels
`How kind of you both,' she was surprised to find her voice sounded quite normal. `It was most thoughtful of you to arrange it.' She looked at her watch. `Now I really must go, I'm on duty in half an hour. I can take this short cut down this alley, can't I?' She was still smiling. `I expect I shall see you before I go.' She shook hands with Margriet, unaware of the scornful amusement of the other girl at the ease with which Adelaide had been taken in.
`Just in case you don't, Sister, have a good trip home.' She smiled confidingly at Adelaide. 'I'm longing to tell you a secret-I know I shouldn't, but you'll not say a word, I know. I'm hoping to marry Professor Van Essen quite soon.' She watched Adelaide's face become even whiter than it was already.
`I thought you'd be delighted.' Her blue eyes gleamed with triumph.
Adelaide wondered if she was going to faint, she certainly felt most peculiar; she supposed dully that it was shock. She said quietly, `I hope you will be very happy, Juffrouw. I...I must go, or I shall be late.'
She turned into the alley and walked very fast back to the hospital. She had no idea how she got there, or how she changed her clothes, but punctually at eleven o'clock she walked into the professor's office. Piet gave her a startled look and asked her if she was feeling all right; to her relief, the professor said nothing at all. Only later, as they were leaving to go to lunch, he asked if there was anything the matter. His voice was so kind that she had a tremendous urge to burst into tears, cast herself upon his shoulder, and tell him the whole miserable story-which, her matter-of-fact mind told her, was just about the silliest thing that she could do. Instead she said in an unnaturally bright little voice:
`It's nothing, thank you, sir, only that I have a touch of the toothache.'
Adelaide didn't go to her dinner, but spent the hour in her room. She had to think of something, quickly. She caught sight of herself in the mirror; she looked terrible. She remembered that she had told the professor that she had a toothache. Her teeth had never given her any trouble in her life before, but surely a wisdom tooth could flare up at a moment's notice? She started to weave a pattern of lies, for she could think of no other way out of an impossible situation. She went back on duty, and took care to tell the professor that her toothache was no better.
After the clinic was over for the day, and she was alone on duty, she went along to her little office and carefully composed a little note, regretting her inability to go to the dance with him. It would be natural enough for her to do that if her toothache was bad enough, and there would be plenty of time for him to arrange to take Margriet. This melancholy thought caused her to burst into tears and ruin
the note, which she had to re-write, then she put it carefully in her pocket and went to supper. She sat near Home Sister, who commented upon her wan looks, so that she was able to tell her, and everyone else sitting nearby, about the wisdom tooth. Home Sister told her kindly to go to bed with plenty of aspirin and she would send a hot drink up presently.
Adelaide prepared for bed, feeling wretched. She had been brought up to have a healthy horror of lying, and now here she was, having told one, forced to tell more every time she opened her mouth. That she wasn't lying for her own benefit hadn't occurred to her. She lay awake most of the night, deciding what she must do, and in the morning, thanks to her sleeplessness, looked worse than ever. She wished the doctors a subdued good morning when they arrived, and in answer to Piet's sympathetic enquiry as to which tooth it was, said:
`It's a wisdom tooth, I think-the left side. I had no idea they could be so painful,' she added for good measure.
The professor regarded her thoughtfully. `Why not have it looked at? There may be something that can be done to ease the pain.'
Adelaide busied herself with some charts, her head turned away from him. `No, thank you, sir,' she said carefully. `I will probably be much better by this evening.'
The morning seemed very long. She avoided the professor as much as possible, and remembered to wince convincingly when she drank her coffee, and put a hand up to her jaw. The professor noticed her action.
`The right wisdom tooth, I think you said, Sister?'
Adelaide stared back at him. He was looking at her very intently. Which side had she told Piet? He wasn't in the room; she didn't know if that was fortunate or not, she was past caring. She no longer had the least idea which wisdom tooth ached. She said recklessly;
`Yes, the right side, sir.'
At dinner time she sought out Home Sister and reported sick.
`If I could just have the rest of the day in bed, Zuster Groeneveld, I'm sure I'll be all right for duty tomorrow. I'm sorry to miss the ball, but I shouldn't enjoy myself, should I?'
Home Sister agreed, commiserated with her on missing all the fun, gave her a fresh supply of aspirins and a cup of tea, and promised that Adelaide's note should be delivered to the professor at once.
The morning had seemed long; the afternoon and evening stretched everlastingly before her. Most of the Sisters were going to the ball. Adelaide sat in bed, admiring them as they came in turn to show their dresses and sympathise with her. When the last one had gone, she got out of bed and went over to her window and opened it wider, so that she could hear the band playing. She stood there a long time, getting very cold, and not noticing it. She got into bed at last, and lay thinking of what she had to do the next morning. When she had planned everything to her entire satisfaction, she burst into tears and after a little, cried herself to sleep.
At nine o'clock the next morning, Adelaide presented herself at Matron's office. The Directrice was busy at her desk as she went in, but looked up and smiled when she saw who it was. She liked Adelaide, who had proved herself a hardworking, sensible, and popular nurse, and had adapted herself to the hospital routine without tedious comparisons between it and her own training school.
She said graciously, `Good morning, Sister Peters. I'm sorry to hear that you had to miss the ball. It was a great success. I hope your tooth is better?'
Adelaide was momentarily taken aback. She had forgotten about her toothache in the anxiety of getting her speech, rehearsed during the bitter wakeful hours of the night, clear both as to grammar and meaning. She faltered a little, and said uncertainly: `My tooth? Thank you, Directrice, but I have no toothache.' She ignored the Matron's look of surprise and plunged into the matter in hand, speaking in her heavily accented but fluent Dutch. `I should like to leave, Directrice. At once. It is a purely personal matter, nothing at all to do with my work, but it is essential that I go home at once. Will you please allow me to go?' She spoke with a quiet desperation that convinced her hearer of her sincerity.
The Matron looked down at her blotter and asked gently:
`Could you explain a little more fully, Sister? You have been happy here, haven't you?'
Adelaide smiled. It lighted up her tired face.
`I've been very happy,' her smile faded, `and I'm sorry I have to leave like this, although it is only a short time before I am due to go; and I'm afraid I can't tell you any more than I have done, Directrice.'
`Very well, Sister. I think I know you well enough to understand that you are not making this request lightly. But it would be too late for you to go today, in any case.'
`May I go tomorrow? I can arrange my journey today, and pack this evening.' Adelaide hesitated; she still had one more favour to ask. `Could I go without anyone knowing about it? I know it sounds extraordinary, Directrice, but I have a good reason for asking.'
The Matron frowned. `I suppose so, Sister-I shall, of course, have to warn Professor Van Essen.'
Adelaide felt her heart hammer at the name. `No, please ...I mean, may I tell him myself? It isn't inconvenient for me to go... Staff Nurse Wilsma is there, so it won't make any difference.'
If the matron heard the desperate urgency in her voice, she gave no sign, but tidied the already tidy papers on the desk before her, and thought. `So that's it!' She had known the professor for a great many years; she was very fond of hi
m, now she fought a desire to pick up the phone and tell him to come and cope with a situation she couldn't understand.
Adelaide felt nearer to tears. She took a step nearer the desk and said in a beseeching, carefully controlled little voice:
`Please don't tell Professor Van Essen, Directrice.'
`I promise you I will say nothing, Sister. I am sorry that you are unable to let me help you. I should have liked to have done so. But you know best, my dear.' She smiled with real kindliness. `Do you want to go on duty? Yes?' She nodded dismissal.
Adelaide went to the door, but turned back when she got to it.
`Thank you for being so kind, Directrice.' She couldn't think of anything else to say.
She went to the Sisters' Home from the office, got her cases and put them in her room, then went to the little telephone box in the hall and rang up a travel agency and booked her ticket for the next day without difficulty. It wasn't a time of year when people travelled for pleasure. It was half past nine when she got to the clinic, which was in confusion. One of the children had been sick on the floor, and a boy in one of the cubicles was in the throes of an epileptic fit. The professor was dealing with it as she went in, but he looked up as she crossed the room.
'Ah, Sister Peters, you seem to have arrived at the right moment. Take over here, will you, while I write him up for something, then ii' you will give it, we can ward him. We'd better have him on observation.'
Adelaide gave some hasty instructions to the nurse to get the place tidied up, and did as she was asked. It was fortunate, she thought, that they were too busy to have time to talk. Indeed there was no time for conversation for the rest of the morning, nor did they take their usual coffee break. By one o'clock the morning clinic was over, an hour late, and they had to be ready in an hour's time for the afternoon session. Adelaide sent the nurses to dinner and whirled around the clinic, changing couch covers, spanking pillows into shape, putting out paper towels, doing all the small jobs vital to a smooth-running clinic. Piet Beekman had dashed home; the professor sat at his desk, scribbling notes in the morning's case papers. He was a methodical man; the morning's work was never allowed to overlap into the afternoon. Adelaide, checking X-rays with less than her usual brisk efficiency, was very conscious of him. She looked up and caught his eye upon her. She would have to say something about the ball; she sorted half a dozen films into the wrong order, and said in an uncertain voice:
'I'm sorry I couldn't go with you last night, sir. I was very disappointed.'
`So was I,' he answered flatly.
Rather discouraged, she persevered. `I expect you found someone else to go with?' Despite all her efforts, she was annoyed to hear her voice quiver.
`If you mean did I have a sufficient number of dancing partners, Sister Peters-yes, I did.'
She hadn't meant that at all. She longed to ask him if he had taken Margriet, but didn't dare to do so, and-she glanced swiftly at his downbent head. He was sufficiently out of humour to remind her that it was no business of hers, as indeed, she had to allow, it wasn't.
`Your toothache is better, I hope, Sister? Er-both sides, was it not?'
She dropped the X-rays she was holding, and got down on her knees, scarlet-cheeked, to pick them up. When the professor came quietly from behind his desk and got down on his knees beside her, she dropped them again. He collected them neatly, merely remarking:
`The pain seems to have left you in a highly nervous state, Sister Peters. I think it advisable for you to see a dentist before you suffer a further attack.'
Adelaide jumped to her feet as he uncoiled himself from the floor. She wished he wasn't standing quite so close, he seemed enormous, but when she looked at him his face was as placid as usual. For a brief, terrifying moment she had thought that he might have guessed about the toothache.
`Thank you, sir, but I'll go when I get back to England. My own dentist-it doesn't hurt any more-remarkable how the pain went...' She realised she was babbling, and stood, for once idle, watching him piling the X-rays neatly into their right order. He put them down on his desk and reached for the telephone. She watched while he dialled a number, but when he said casually: `This man's a personal friend of mine. You'll like him. I can't allow you to go back to England with evenn a suspicion of toothache,' she panicked.
`Please don't.' She could hear her voice high and strained. `I beg you, please don't. I won't go...'
He put the phone back in its cradle, and said in the silky voice she knew so well; `Just as you wish, Adelaide.' He got up. `I'm going to have a sandwich. We'll start promptly, please.'
She watched him stalk out of the room, and listened to him going down the corridor. He was whistling, one of the tunes they had whistled together when they had gone to England. She had been very happy then. She stared unseeingly at the notes in her hand, and gave a great sniff. She would have liked to cry, but there wasn't time, nor was it a suitable place in which to give way to her feelings. She finished what she was doing, then went into her office and closed the door. She still had to write a letter to the professor, explaining why she was leaving. She made one or two vain attempts, but it was useless. She would have to do it in the morning. So she busied herself with the off-duty for the next week, and saw to the stores and stationery and linen lists; it was the least she could do. Just before two, she went back to the office in time to help the two doctors on with their white coats, and told Zuster Steensma to bring in the first patient. The afternoon clinic had started.
When she was at last off duty she went to her room, packed her cases and sat down to write some letters. She wondered what her friends would say when they heard that she had gone without a word of farewell; she would write and explain when she was back in England. After supper she went for a walk with Zuster Zijlstra and bade a silent goodbye to the streets as they passed through them. On their way back they walked down the Herengracht, past the professor's red brick mansion. Several of the windows were lighted; she wondered in which room he was sitting, and if Margriet was with him.
She slept badly, and was glad when it was morning and she could go on duty. She went straight to her office; she had to write a letter to Coenraad, and there would be no time once they started work. After half a dozen attempts she achieved a stiff little letter, and was addressing the envelope when there was a knock on the door and the professor looked in. Adelaide jumped up, feeling guilty, wished him rather a breathless good morning, and managed an embarrassed little laugh when he remarked:
`You don't have to look so guilty, Sister; I'm early.'
He showed no disposition to go, so she stuffed the letter and envelope into her pocket and accompanied him down the corridor to his own office, talking to him in a polite voice, as though he were a stranger she had just met for the first time.
The clinic was slack, so Adelaide was able to do what the Matron had suggested and go to first dinner, leaving Zuster Wilsma to finish the clinic with the two doctors. She sat at the table, eating nothing, then went to Matron's office and bade her goodbye. By two o'clock she was at the hospital entrance with her luggage. Here she gave her letter to the porter, with instructions to deliver it to the professor at five o'clock,, and not a minute before. To make sure that there was no mistake, she wrote the instructions on the envelope as well, and watched the man put it in the doctors' letter rack by the door, before getting into her taxi. The porter loaded her cases beside the driver, surprised that she was leaving. He shook hands with her and offered to tell the driver where to go.
Adelaide looked at her watch. She had plenty of time, indeed she was far too early, because, she admitted ruefully, she had been afraid of meeting Coenraad again. She made a sudden decision to say goodbye to Baroness Van Essen; she liked the old lady, and would be able to wish her a personal goodbye and give some explanation for her abrupt departure, for which she would stick to her tale of urgent private affairs. She gave the address to the porter, and sat back resolutely looking away from the hospital where she had been so
happy.
She rang the bell hesitantly; it was an awkward time to call. The Baroness might not be at home. The door was, however, opened immediately by Bundle, who ushered her inside the house, and in answer to her enquiry as to whether she might see his mistress for a few minutes, asked her to be seated while he went to discover if the Baroness was receiving visitors. She was. Adelaide found herself, in the same small parlour as before, where Coenraad's aunt sat comfortably before an open fire. She smiled at Adelaide as she walked across the room.
`How nice to see you, Adelaide. Forgive me if I don't get up. What a long time it is since you were here last. Sit down, my dear. I hope you can spare half an hour for a gossip.'
Adelaide chose a chair facing the door, away from the light.
"`Please forgive me for calling like this, but I'm on my way to the station, and I found that I had just enough time to come and wish you goodbye.' She paused, aware of Baroness Van Essen's surprised look, and chose her next words carefully. `I have to go home unexpectedly...'