The Silver Thaw

by Betty Neels

  Gideon threw her a sidelong glance. ‘Yes, it is. And I see no sign of a thaw.’

  She looked around her. ‘No, but it’s lovely just the same.’

  ‘I’m waiting for the silver thaw, Amelia.’

  She knew what he meant and she wasn’t a girl to evade the issue. ‘Well, there isn’t going to be one,’ she told him flatly, ‘and I can’t think why you keep on about it.’

  ‘I should like to see you happy, Amelia.’

  She slipped on a patch of ice and he flung an arm around her and kept it there. ‘Just because you’re so happy yourself,’ she said slowly, ‘it doesn’t mean that you have to see that everyone else is happy.’

  ‘Not everyone, just you.’ He lifted her neatly over a tree trunk fallen in their path. ‘Why don’t you write to Tom? You know, when you’re in love you shouldn’t give up so easily.’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ she told him in a mulish voice, ‘it’ll spoil the walk.’

  ‘In that case let us concentrate on the scene around us.’ His voice was light as though he were glad to change the subject. ‘There’s the village beyond the line of trees, it’s still light enough to see round the church; we can go back along the road.’

  The church was charming; much too large for the village, towering over the small houses crowded round it, its plain glass windows rather austere, its doors tight shut until someone who had seen them pass came running with a key to open a side door.

  The interior was lofty and very cold, its white-washed walls reflecting the winter sky outside. The pulpit with its enormous sounding-board dominated the old-fashioned pews beneath it, and the walls were half covered by plaques of the long departed, most of them, Amelia saw, van der Tolcks.

  ‘Has your family lived here for a long time?’ she asked, frowning over an impossible-to-understand inscription held by a well built angel.

  ‘Oh, lord yes—the castle was built in the fourteenth century.’

  ‘And you’ve—your family—have lived there ever since?’

  ‘Yes, always a direct line of succession, too.’ Gideon smiled briefly. ‘We’ve always gone in for a lot of children.’

  It reminded her of his remarks about his children having a lovely home in which to grow up. She turned her back on the angel and concentrated on a funeral urn upheld by a female heavily draped and veiled.

  ‘I’ve been waiting,’ observed Gideon blandly, ‘for you to ask me whom I intend to marry.’

  ‘Well, I’m not going to—I don’t want to know.’ She paused. ‘At least, I can guess, but I still don’t want to know. Not ever.’ She drew a deep breath. ‘Please, Gideon, don’t talk about it.’

  ‘Just as you wish. Do come and look at this marble group—a very ancient ancestor of mine, with his wife—aren’t the children delightful? Six boys on one side and six girls on the other.’

  And after that he led her round the church, showing her everything, answering her questions in a tolerant, good-humoured manner which made her feel as though she were a stranger being given a conducted tour by a guide. And later, as they walked back, he kept up a steady flow of casual talk, the kind of talk with which a good host would indulge a not very well-known guest. Amelia supposed she had deserved it.

  There were more people to dinner that evening but no dancing afterwards, just gossip and a good deal of laughter. Amelia, in the claret crêpe-de-chine, would have enjoyed it all very much if only Gideon had made an effort to talk to her over and above the polite enquiries as to whether she would like another drink or was she warm enough, and what pleasure she did have was rendered quite hollow by overhearing him telling one of the English guests present that he had just received a telephone call from America. So that when, towards the end of the evening, he came and sat down beside her with the air of a man who intended to settle for some time, she said yes and no and oh, really and nothing else—and then, being female to her very bones, was furious with him when on the slightest of excuses, he went away again.

  She allowed herself a good burst of tears when she was in bed and relieved her feelings by calling Fiona all the names under the sun.

  She was leaving after lunch the next day and Renier had told her that he would drive her to Schiphol, and since Gideon hadn’t even hinted that he would be seeing her off himself—and indeed why should he?—she had accepted gladly. She took an affectionate leave of his mother and brothers and sisters and since Gideon had been absent for the whole morning, left polite messages for him and went out to the car with Renier. She was replying suitably to Jorrit’s gravely spoken farewell when she saw the Rolls coming very fast round the curve of the drive. It stopped beside Renier’s car and Gideon got out and walked unhurriedly up the steps, saying something to Renier as he came. ‘Beautifully timed,’ he observed to Amelia’s astonished face. ‘I wasn’t relishing the prospect of chasing you all the way to Schiphol.’

  ‘But Renier’s taking me...’

  ‘I’m taking you—he was the stand-in in case I couldn’t make it.’

  She could think of nothing to say. She sat beside him, quite silent, wishing she had the nerve to say all the things she wanted to and knowing that she wouldn’t. Gideon didn’t say anything either but occupied himself with driving, occasionally whistling softly to himself, which Amelia found very irritating to her already stretched nerves.

  They were actually at Schiphol and she was nicely embarked on her farewell speech when he cut her short. ‘Let’s not waste time, we’ve done that too often already, and now, damn it, we’ve only a couple of minutes when we could have talked while we drove.’ He bent to look into her face. ‘You see, my dear, you’re still frosted over, aren’t you?’ He kissed her suddenly and quite roughly. ‘And if it’s of any interest to you, Amelia, Fiona isn’t the girl I’ve set my heart on.’

  A well-modulated voice from somewhere in the roof begged those for the London flight to get a move on. ‘I’m coming to see you,’ said Gideon, and kissed her again before giving her a gentle push through the gateway to her plane.

  Chapter NINE

  AMELIA FLUNG HERSELF into her work with a vigour to cause her nurses to raise eyebrows behind her back and exchange significant glances when they thought she wasn’t looking. The lists weren’t heavy and she embarked on a campaign of cleaning, repairing and replacing which left everyone breathless and the various departments decidedly edgy. She might have gone on for days like this, snappy with her friends, austerely civil with everyone else, if there hadn’t been a bad accident close to the hospital in the early hours of the morning. It had been a cold night, icy underfoot, and now just after dawn and foggy, a crowded bus had had no chance when it was rammed by a van loaded with furniture.

  Amelia, called urgently to go to the theatre at once, dressed fast, bundled her hair up, fastened it ruthlessly with pins thrust in at random and rushed through the hospital. Even her early morning face, devoid of make-up, looked beautiful in the bleak lights of the passages she hurried through. Almost there, she met the RSO and they both stopped to exchange vital information. ‘A bus,’ he told her, enlarging on the information she had had from the nurse who had called her. ‘Packed—they’re still getting them out. Get both theatres going, will you? We’ll do the small stuff in the Accident Room, but there are bound to be urgent cases for you.’ He eyed her carefully. ‘You’re very untidy.’

  Amelia had never liked him overmuch; he was a good surgeon and reliable, but he lacked a sense of humour, but all she said mildly was: ‘Yes, aren’t I? I didn’t waste much time dressing, but I’m here and in my right mind. Give me as much warning as you can, won’t you?’

  She tore on, upstairs and through the swing doors and straight into her office, where she lifted the receiver and dialled the Accident Room.

  ‘Janet? Amelia here. Look, let me have some idea of what to expect as soon as you know, will you
? I met Mr Lord on the way here, but he’ll probably forget...’

  ‘OK. It’s pretty grim—we’re in for a busy day. I’ll give you a ring just as soon as I know something.’

  The first case came up ten minutes later, a young man with a fractured base of skull. Amelia scrubbed for him, sending Sybil to the second theatre to do the same for a young woman with severe lacerations. And after that they kept on coming, between them they managed to snatch a mug of tea, but that was all; breakfast was out of the question, there weren’t enough of them to spare even one at a time. They were on their third case when Doctor Gough, the senior anaesthetist, gave up his stool with a thankful: ‘I’ll be back in fifteen minutes. Will you be going back to the Accident Room?’

  Amelia, bent over her trolley, dropped the forceps in her hand at Gideon’s quiet voice. ‘Thomley-Jones asked me to stay up here for a while, to take over from Owen in the other theatre—he’s been up for most of the night, I understand.’

  She signed to a nurse to pick up the forceps, finished the exact arrangement of the instruments and gently kicked the trolley into position with one foot. Only then did she glance to the head of the table where Gideon was sitting over his patient, very large and anonymous in his gown and cap. He didn’t look at her, though, which was just as well, for her heart was hammering against her ribs, sounding loud in her ears, so that she glanced around to see if anyone had heard it too. Apparently not. The RSO, who had relieved Mr Thomley-Jones for that case, requested towel clips and forceps, and she began once more on her well-learned duties, her mind empty now but for the task in hand.

  The operation took a long time. The elderly patient was covered with small deep wounds caused by glass, each one of which had to be explored and then stitched, and all the while Gideon didn’t look at her—perhaps he didn’t know she was there, she allowed herself the fleeting thought as she began clearing for the next case while the RSO attended to the very last cut.

  Two student nurses and a part-time staff nurse reported for duty as the patient was wheeled away, and Amelia was able to send her own nurse down to a meal. The staff nurse wasn’t too happy about taking cases, but Amelia assured her that there was nothing to it, and sent Sybil to a meal too. She was getting the next trolley ready when Sybil poked her head round the door.

  ‘Look, Sister, let me take over here while you have something...’

  Amelia went to the sink to scrub up. ‘Thanks a lot, but I think that if Staff Wilkes takes your next case—it’s only a flesh wound of the leg and pretty straightforward—you can come back here and take over from me. There’s a ruptured spleen coming up now; by the time that’s done you’ll be back. Is Wilkes able to cope, do you think?’

  ‘She’ll have to.’

  Amelia nodded. ‘Take Nurse Carter with you, one of the relief nurses can take over from her—I’d better have the other one in here.’

  ‘Right, Sister.’ Sybil’s head disappeared and then reappeared. ‘I say, who’s the giant in the anaesthetic room?’

  ‘He’s just popped in to give a hand. Sybil, find out how they’re getting on in the AR, will you?’

  ‘OK. Shall I ask them to send some food to the office for you?’

  ‘That’s an idea. Ask Gertie to make some tea and boil me an egg or something, but not until this case is finished.’

  Sybil’s head disappeared again and Amelia, tied into her sterile gown, put on her gloves and bent to her trolleys, ticking off in her tired head all the things that should be upon them. She was testing a Moynihan’s clamp when Gideon walked in. His ‘Hullo’, was friendly and calm and he went on just as calmly: ‘If you’ve nothing better to do this evening I should like to give you dinner.’

  She had gone very pink, thankful that nothing of her face was visible behind the mask. ‘I can think of absolutely nothing better to do than eat at the moment,’ she told him. ‘By this evening I shall be famished—you’ll have to bear with me making a pig of myself.’

  ‘I think we know each other well enough for that.’ His voice was bland.

  Dick Dive, one of the house surgeons, put his head round the door: ‘The next one’s ready, sir,’ and Gideon went away, leaving Amelia feeling a bit overawed because Dick had called him ‘sir’ so respectfully, and to wonder how and why he was there, anyway.

  She asked him that much later, at the end of a long day’s work, when bathed and dressed in a deep pink silk jersey dress, her tired face nicely made up, she sat opposite Gideon in the upstairs room at the White Tower. She had eaten a splendid meal; taramosalata, kebab de turbota la polita, and a lovely rich honey-and-pastry pudding loaded with calories. Now, over coffee, she sighed deeply with satisfaction, filled their cups and asked: ‘Why are you in England?’ and when he didn’t answer at once: ‘I didn’t know you knew Mr Thomley-Jones...’

  ‘An old friend, as it happens. I came to see you, Amelia.’

  Her heart gave a great thump under her ribs. ‘Oh, why?’

  His face was as bland as his voice. ‘To see if you were happy in your work.’

  She said, too sharply: ‘Of course I’m happy—I don’t have time for half the things I want to do...’

  He said evenly: ‘In that case I won’t waste any of it asking you to marry me. And talking of time, without in any way wishing to bring this pleasant little meeting to a close, should you be going back? It’s almost midnight, and I saw tomorrow’s list.’

  Amelia was speechless with rage and humiliation and misery, but she fixed some sort of a smile on to her shaking mouth and rose to leave at once. Only minutes later, as she sat beside him in the car, she voiced the thought uppermost in her mind. ‘But you’re going to marry Fiona.’

  She had left it too late, of course. He turned into the hospital’s forecourt and stopped outside the entrance and before he answered her he got out, opened her door and walked the few paces to the door. ‘You are a very silly girl, Amelia,’ he told her, ‘and your head is a jumble of rubbish which you have stored away with no thought as to its accuracy. And you are still frostbound.’

  He pushed the door open and, unable to think of a word to say, Amelia went through it.

  The morning’s list was indeed a heavy one, and made worse because she hadn’t slept at all, and even more shattering was the fact that despite that, she hadn’t the faintest idea what she was going to do. Strong tea at breakfast helped a little, and so did two hours’ steady work with no chance to think about herself. It was during the third case, a myotomy, that she knew what she was going to do. She would be off at five o’clock, she would find Gideon and tell him that she loved him and did he really want to marry her. She’d wanted to do that, but somehow she had never had the chance—now she would make one. And he wouldn’t be hard to find. She had heard Mr Thomley-Jones invite him to dinner; he hadn’t mentioned a date, but he had said in a couple of days’ time, which meant that Gideon was staying in London. He might even be at the hospital at that very moment. Life all at once became a lot easier. True, her world might still collapse in ruins around her feet, but at least she would know...

  The RSO was stitching up and Mr Thomley-Jones was stripping off his gloves when she heard him say casually: ‘Van der Tolck should be back home by now. A pity, there was that case I wanted to see him about...’ He went off muttering to himself and Amelia, tidying up after him, thought numbly that it served her right. She should have spoken up when she’d been with Gideon on the previous evening. Even if he’d been joking... Suddenly she knew that she wasn’t going on like that for a moment longer. She pushed the trolley away from her, caught Sybil’s eye and asked her to take over. ‘It’s still ten minutes to dinner time, but I’m going early. There’s only that lipoma and Mr Lord will do it.’

  Amelia didn’t stop for more. With her purse in her hand, she started for the lift, thanking God as she went that it happened to be her turn for early dinner. The lift stop
ped to allow a wheelchair and its occupant to be loaded in, but the porter was slow and after a few impatient moments she squeezed past and took to the stairs.

  The telephone box in the hall had someone in it and there were two people waiting. Amelia didn’t waste time but ran out of the door and across the forecourt and into the street, packed with lunch time crowds. There were telephone boxes, four of them, only a hundred yards away.

  Gideon, in the porter’s lodge, waiting with some impatience for the man on duty to ring theatre, watched with astonishment tinged with amusement as Amelia swept past into the dreary chill outside. He bade the man leave it and started unhurriedly after her. His Amelia had looked distraught and, he had to admit, very cross. It would be as well to see where she was going.

  Amelia beat a stout lady with an umbrella by a few seconds to the end telephone box and shut the door on her frustrated face before putting through her call to Holland. At least she knew Gideon’s number, and she got it surprisingly quickly. It was Jorrit who answered and, taking a deep breath, she asked for Gideon, only to be told he wasn’t there.

  ‘Not there?’ she repeated like an idiot. ‘But he must be—they said...I must speak to him!’

  She was aware that the door had been opened behind her and she turned round, ready to argue with the woman, only it was Gideon standing there, filling the doorway and quite half of the phone box, so that she found her nose pressed to his waistcoat. She was in quite a state by now, two angry tears trickled down her cheeks and she was having trouble with her breathing. She let the receiver dangle by its cord. ‘I’m ringing you and you’re not there!’ she told him furiously.

  Gideon picked up the receiver, spoke into it, replaced it on its hook and because it made more room, put an arm round her. ‘What did you want to tell me?’ he asked.