Visiting Consultant

by Neels, Betty

  ‘Sister Greenslade, there are many letters for you.’ He produced a sizeable bundle and handed them to her with a beaming smile. ‘It is your birthday?’

  Sophy beamed back at him. ‘Well, as a matter of fact, it is, Hans. What a lovely lot of letters; thank you.’

  She quickened her steps. She wouldn’t have time to open the letters before the list started; she would leave them in the little office and look at them at her leisure. She put them in a drawer and went along to the sluice and the sterilising room and the anaesthetic room to make sure that everything was in readiness. She could see Zuster Fiske through the window in the theatre door, putting the finishing touches to the instrument trolleys. She looked up and waved and Sophy waved back before collecting the other nurses for the day’s briefing. It still surprised her that they could understand her as easily as she could them—basic English, helped out with a few essential words from the dictionary, was proving highly satisfactory.

  She went along to scrub up and then into theatre to get the sutures ready and count out the swabs. It would be a long morning; the list was a heavy one. She checked the instruments and started to lay up the Mayo table as the patient was wheeled in. The anaesthetist was someone she hadn’t met before—she looked at him warily over her mask and essayed a ‘Dag, Docteur.’

  He looked up, his eyes crinkling into a smile. He said very correctly, ‘How do you do, Sister Greenslade. You see, I know all about you. I’m van Steen.’

  The porters went away, and he twiddled some knobs on the Boyle’s and started to insert an intratracheal tube with great care.

  Sophy paused to watch him. ‘How do you do, sir?’ she replied formally, and then in her usual friendly voice, ‘What a relief—I was afraid you would speak Dutch; though I can’t think why I worried, for everyone I’ve met speaks English.’

  He pulled up a stool and sat down, keeping a hand under his patient’s jaw. ‘We have to,’ he said easily, ‘our language is difficult...’ He broke off as Max van Oosterwelde and Jan Jansen came in.

  Max nodded at them and said carelessly, ‘You’ve already introduced yourselves, I imagine.’ He spoke to Dr van Steen and looked at Sophy, who busied herself with towels and towel clips and left the doctor to reply. The nurses had slipped quietly into their places; she looked with her usual calm around the theatre, making sure that everything was exactly as it should be, and carefully avoided Max’s eye.

  The first case dragged—what should have been a partial gastrectomy proved, of necessity, to be a total gastrectomy and a splenectomy to boot. Sophy, standing on her little platform, listened to the men talking quietly, trying to distinguish a word here and there without much success. From time to time, Max asked her for an instrument in English, but that was all. They went straight on to the second case, which went with textbook perfection, so that the nurses let out soundless sighs of relief as the patient was wheeled away. When Max peeled off his gloves and said, ‘Coffee, I think, Sister,’ they suddenly abandoned their silent watchfulness and sprung into an industrious activity, so that the theatre was already half cleared by the time the three men had strolled through the door.

  Sophy, clearing away the used instruments, finished her task with deliberation even when the junior nurse came to tell her that she had carried in the coffee tray, and then went reluctantly down the broad corridor, pulling off her mask as she went. She flushed under the eyes of the men as she went in, hating herself for it, then felt better when Dr van Steen said cheerfully, ‘We waited for you, Sister, although we are all thirsty.’ He grinned at her. She saw that he had a nice face, almost ugly; brown and wrinkled like a monkey’s. She liked him, and sat down, smiling at him and poured the coffee. It was Max, leaning over the desk and opening drawers to find some list or other, who found her letters. He looked at them without speaking—she had thrown them in in a hurry; they were scattered all over the drawer, unmistakably hers.

  ‘Is it your birthday, Sophy?’ He had left the drawer open, staring at her.

  Sophy took a sip of coffee. ‘Yes, as a matter of fact it is,’ she said in a composed voice, and remembered that she had said exactly the same thing to Hans, only he had wished her a happy birthday in his jolly way, whereas Max, when he did speak, said merely, addressing the room at large, ‘It seems that we must all wish Sister Greenslade Many Happy Returns of the day.’ Which everyone did. Sophy thanked them quietly, finished her coffee, and on the pretext of something to do in theatre, left them. She had barely closed the door when Max turned to Jan.

  ‘Get Hans on the telephone for me, will you?’ and turned to Dr van Steen. ‘I have an idea,’ he said.

  There was no more talk of birthdays that morning. The next case, a straightforward hernia, collapsed as Max was suturing. Sophy’s quick eye had seen Dr van Steen switch on the oxygen, and she had a knife in her hand a split second before Max put out his hand for it and incised the patient’s diaphragm. She nodded with approval—it was the best method, even if tiring for the surgeon. She laid up the Mayo table again with all the instruments he was likely to need, and arranged the gut neatly alongside them. Jan was clipping off bleeding points; Dr van Steen was giving artificial respiration. She wrung out some tetra cloths and covered the sutures, then signalled a nurse for more hot lotions; it would be a long business. Max was standing over the patient his hand out of sight, squeezing the heart with a gentle, regular rhythm. He said, without looking up, ‘Sister, take the forceps as Jansen ties, please,’ and Sophy went silently to unclip the Spencer-Wells as Jansen tied off. He did it quickly and well, and then rinsed his gloved hands and stood waiting to take over from Max while Sophy slipped back on to her box. After a minute, Max said,

  ‘Right, Jan. Now,’ and withdrew a careful hand as Jan relieved him.

  Max turned away to rinse his hands in his turn, then straightened his back, towering over the little group round the table. ‘How is it going?’ he asked Dr van Steen, who, without pausing, said cheerfully,

  ‘Got him in time, I think, don’t you?’ He looked down the table to Sophy and winked, his hand squeezing the rebreathing bag without stopping.

  Max took over again, and Sophy threaded needles and rinsed some instruments. It was almost time to send some of the nurses to dinner; there were two more cases still to be done; luckily, the afternoon list was a short one, not due to start until two-thirty. Max said, as though she had voiced her thoughts aloud,

  ‘We’ll do the other cases after this and have some coffee and food sent up if you don’t mind, Sister— what have I got this afternoon? Short stuff, if I remember aright.’

  They finished the last case for the morning just as the nurses came back from second dinner. Sophy sent one of them to telephone for coffee and sandwiches and then went herself to help the others in the welter of clearing up. She supposed that she could get something to eat in the dining room, but that would have to wait for another ten minutes or so. She was stripping a trolley when Max came back, and said, as he had said once before, ‘Your coffee’s getting cold, Sophy’

  She pushed her theatre cap to the back of her head with the back of a hand filled with unused swabs. Tm going down to the dining room,’ she said, and added, nicely mannered, ‘Thank you, sir.’

  He eyed her coolly. ‘You’ll kindly have coffee and sandwiches with us, Sister Greenslade.’

  Sophy put down the swabs. He was using a voice she didn’t care to disobey. With outward meekness and secret annoyance she followed him to the office. The desk was covered with coffee cups and a large plate of sandwiches, and all these were overshadowed by the largest bouquet of flowers Sophy had ever seen.

  ‘From us all,’ said Max pleasantly. ‘We haven’t exactly contributed to a happy day so far, have we? We must see what can be done about it.’ She presumed that he was talking about the afternoon list. She thanked them rather shyly, bit hungrily into a sandwich and observed,

  ‘They’re all straightforward cases this afternoon, aren’t they? I mean, there’s no reason why we
shouldn’t be finished on time, is there?’

  ‘Are you going out this evening?’ asked Jan.

  Sophy looked surprised. ‘Who? Me?’ she asked, forgetful of grammar. ‘No.’

  ‘Do you not celebrate birthdays in England?’ Jan wanted to know. ‘In Holland they are important occasions. An outing or a party, and all the family forgather.’

  Sophy said reasonably, ‘But I can’t have a party without people to come to it, can I, and it’s not very nice weather for an outing. Besides, my family can’t forgather, can they?’

  ‘I thought that perhaps John—er—Austin, isn’t it?—might have arranged to come over.’ Max’s voice was silky.

  Sophy went pink; she had forgotten her mythical boy-friend. ‘How could he?’ she asked airily. ‘Monday is such a busy day for bank managers.’

  This interesting piece of information was received with polite murmurs from her companions. She avoided Max’s eye, and drank her coffee.

  ‘I should have thought,’ said Jan, at his most deliberate, ‘that Monday would be one of the slackest days for bank managers. You see, after the weekend...’

  He got no further. Max interrupted him smoothly. ‘Jan, I believe I’ve left my tobacco pouch in the car— slide down and get it, would you?’

  He tossed his houseman the keys, caught Dr van Steen’s eye and stared blandly back at him. Sophy had attacked the crockery on the tray and was on the way to the door with it. Dr van Steen, with his hand on the handle, said, ‘You don’t mind if we smoke, Sister?’

  ‘Not a bit,’ said Sophy cheerfully; she was thinking of her flowers. He closed the door behind her, and the men’s eyes met.

  ‘Stupid of me,’ murmured Max. ‘I remember now, I left my pouch in the changing room.’ They exchanged smiles as he got up.

  It was a pity none of Sophy’s new friends were off duty that evening. She looked at her cards and arranged them carefully on her dressing table and then went downstairs to the sitting room. She didn’t know any of the sisters there very well; she struggled with a monosyllabic conversation for a little while, then gave up apologetically and looked at the pictures in Panorama. It was only six o’clock; the evening stretched ahead, as dull as yesterday’s cooked potatoes. She had just decided to wash her hair when Home Sister poked her nice cosy face round the door.

  ‘Zuster Greenslade, there are people—for you.’ She smiled kindly, and Sophy got up. Someone from the theatre: she must have forgotten something.

  Jan Jansen and Dr van Steen were standing in the homely little hall.

  ‘We have come to take you to a party—your party for your birthday.’ Dr van Steen laughed at her look of complete surprise. ‘How long will it take you to dress?’

  Sophy realised with something of a shock that they were wearing dinner jackets.

  ‘Where are we going?’ she wanted to know.

  ‘Surprise,’ said Jan, ‘you have to wait and see. You have a pretty dress to wear?’

  Sophy smiled happily. ‘Yes, I have. I’ll be twenty minutes.’

  She was as good as her word—or almost. It was twenty-five minutes later when she joined them again, the amber Thai silk covered with her serviceable tweed coat. They whisked her into the cold evening and into the Vauxhall Cavalier outside—Dr Van Steen’s car, for he got behind the wheel and Sophy was squeezed next to him with Jan on the other side.

  ‘When am I to know where I’m going?’ begged Sophy.

  ‘When we get there,’ said Jan. ‘I told you, it’s a secret.’

  She had no inkling of their direction, they were going along streets she didn’t know, but presently they turned into the Amsterdamse Weg, until they left it for a narrow quiet road, running hand-in-hand with water. When they slowed down through Maarssen, she asked doubtfully.

  ‘We’re not going to Amsterdam, are we?’

  Dr van Steen turned off the road on to an even narrower one which still followed the river haphazardly. ‘We have arrived,’ he said, and steered the car through big gates and up a short drive. There were lights ahead, Sophy could see the outlines of a large house, and as they drew up the front door was flung wide so that they stepped out into a pool of light. Sophy paused uncertainly to find herself hurried up the steps and into the glass vestibule whose inner door was being invitingly held open. She looked carefully at the man who was holding it—a manservant, she supposed and a stranger. She stepped past him into the magnificence of the hall with its oaken ceiling and linenfold panelling, and was suddenly certain who was the owner of its sombre richness. A pair of carved oaken doors were flung open on her left, and she turned to meet Max’s quizzical gaze. He walked towards her, his elegance complementing the elegance of his surroundings, so that she became unhappily aware of the tweed coat. There was the murmur of a gently persuasive voice behind her and she thankfully shed the offending garment as Max said, ‘That’s right, Goeden, hang it up somewhere for Miss Green-slade,’ and then, ‘How delightful you look, Sophy.’ He stood before her, a smile just curving his mouth.

  Sophy strove for composure, and almost achieving it said, ‘Good evening, Doctor,’ her beautiful eyebrows raised in faint enquiry.

  ‘Oh dear,’ he was faintly mocking, T forget my manners—you must blame the effect of your charming gown. Good evening, Sister Greenslade.’ Dr van Steen and Jan had joined them, and Max nodded at them.

  ‘I was getting anxious, Karel, but of course that car of yours only crawls...’ The three men laughed, and Sophy felt annoyed—they could at least tell her why she was there. She asked, in a frigidly polite voice, and they all looked at her, but it was Max who answered.

  ‘Did we not tell you that a birthday in Holland is a most important day? We decided to show you how we celebrate it in our country.’

  He caught her arm and drew her towards the double doors through which he had come, with Goeden soft-footed ahead to open them and allow Sophy a glimpse of the room beyond, softly lit by a scattering of lamps on the numerous tables—there was some sort of concealed lighting in the cornice too, displaying the vividness of the painted ceiling. There were about a dozen people in the room. They turned and looked at her as she stood in the doorway, and she caught her breath in a loud gasp as they started to sing—it was a short and rollicking verse and seemed to be directed at herself. She felt Max’s hand, cool and firm, give her own a squeeze and as the singing stopped he murmured,

  ‘That’s for you, birthday girl—’Long shall she live in glory’.’ His eyes twinkled down into her surprised ones. ‘And now everyone will shake you by the hand.’

  He stood very close, introducing everyone in turn with a kind of casual good manners that made it easy for her.

  It was delightful to see Adelaide again, too, and her smiling, placid husband, who, after a few minutes’ gentle conversation with her, turned to Max, remarking that he wanted a few words with him later on. Sophy seized the opportunity to turn away and was instantly seized by Dr van Steen and Tineke; there was a short, dark man with them with an unpronounceable name who smiled at her with what she could only consider to be Don Juan charm, and begged her to call him Harry. He handed her a glass from a tray Goeden was carrying around, and Sophy sipped something which she didn’t recognise but which tasted good, and began to laugh at Harry, who was amusing. She couldn’t see Max any more, but Jan and a pretty fair-haired girl strolled over, and she began to enjoy herself, and even found the opportunity to look at the other women’s dresses. She decided at a glance that none of them was off the peg. Adelaide, who had just rejoined them, was wearing a deceptively simple chiffon gown, its soft blue setting off her fiery hair to its best advantage, and Tineke, in black velvet, looked like a fairy-tale princess. Sophy sighed with relief that she had brought the amber silk with her after all—it wasn’t couture, but she had no need to be ashamed of it. She smiled rather nicely at Harry, who took her glass and began, ‘I say...’ just as Goeden’s mellow voice informed them that dinner was served. Harry put a hand on her arm and then took it away ag
ain as Max’s voice behind her said pleasantly, ‘My privilege, old fellow,’ and tucked her hand under his arm. When she looked up at him he was smiling, although she thought she detected annoyance in his eyes.

  The dining room was furnished with a restrained grandeur which she found intimidating, although she supposed, with her usual good sense, that if you dined in it every day of your life it wouldn’t seem so at all. She sat on Max’s right, with Jan on her other side, and afterwards she tried to remember what she ate and found that she had no idea—but she remembered that she was toasted in champagne.

  The talk was general and pleasant, with a lot of laughter, and when presently Sophy fell silent, Max asked, under cover of the hubbub, ‘What are you thinking, Sophy?’

  She spooned an elaborate confection of ice cream and then sat looking at it. ‘Mary,’ she said. ‘She would have loved this.’ She made a small graceful gesture with one hand, embracing the guests and the stately room with its beautifully appointed table. ‘She would...fit in, wouldn’t she? She is so awfully pretty and she knows how to talk.’ She was unconscious of the wistfulness of her own voice.

  Max smiled. ‘Pretty witty Mary,’ and added, ‘and quite wasted on me, I’m afraid.’

  Sophy turned pink, and said ingenuously, ‘Yes, that was a pity, wasn’t it? But now I can quite understand why.’ She glanced across the table to where Tineke was sitting, and Max’s gaze, suddenly frowning, followed hers.

  ‘So you understand...’ he began. But Sophy was getting to her feet in obedience to the little nod from the tall old lady who had been sitting at the foot of the table.

  The women broke into little groups in the drawing room, waiting for coffee and the men. Adelaide van Essen had drawn Sophy over to an inviting-looking sofa, but they had barely spoken two words together when Tineke joined them. ‘Mevrouw Penninck wants to talk to you,’ she told Sophy in her light, friendly voice. ‘I’ll take you over, if you like.’

  Sophy found herself sitting beside the rather formidable old lady, being scrutinised through a pair of lorgnettes; but the eyes behind them were kind, so she remained still, waiting for the old lady to speak.