Visiting Consultant

by Neels, Betty

  ‘Do you like the house, Miss Greenslade?’

  The question was unexpected. Sophy hesitated and then said, ‘I haven’t seen a great deal of it, Mevrouw Penninck, but it appears to be very beautiful and, I imagine, old.’ She remembered the linenfold panelling in the hall and commented on it, and her companion looked at her approvingly, and said in her stilted, almost faultless English,

  ‘And what sort of a home do you come from, Miss Greenslade?’

  Sophy hesitated once more, and Mevrouw Penninck said quickly, ‘Am I being rude?—I have perhaps spoken incorrectly, my English is not often used.’

  Sophy smiled one of her nice smiles. ‘Not in the least rude,’ she said. ‘I wondered if you wanted to know about my people or the house I live in.’

  ‘Both,’ was the reply—’especially of the dog and the cat.’ She saw the surprise on Sophy’s face and said, ‘My grandson—Max—you know, told me of them.’

  It was nice to talk about her family and the house to someone who was so interested; she chattered on happily until Max came over to them.

  ‘We’re going to dance for a little while, Grandmother. Will you be quite happy sitting there? Sophy, come along—you must open the ball, you know.’

  Someone had rolled up the beautiful circular carpet and pushed its faded magnificence under the big windows; somewhere or other a CD player had been started. Save for a careless enquiry as to whether she was enjoying herself, Max didn’t speak, and at the end of the dance, handed her quite cheerfully to Jan. She saw him presently, dancing with Tineke; they were talking with the same intensity as she had seen in the restaurant. Perhaps it was that memory that made her dance several times with Harry. She had decided that she didn’t like him very much after all, but he flattered her outrageously, and in some obscure way, she thought that it might be good for her ego. Even without him, she wouldn’t have lacked for partners. Baron van Essen, quickstepping with an expertise she hadn’t expected of him, remarked that her popularity was such that he was lucky to get her for a dance at all. It wasn’t quite true, but she could have hugged him for saying it.

  It was almost midnight when the party broke up and everyone made their way into the hall where coats and wraps were found and put on and farewells said. Sophy, once more in the tweed coat, found Harry beside her.

  ‘I’ll take you back,’ he said cheerfully, and refused to listen when she explained that she would be going with Dr van Steen. She was getting faintly annoyed with his persistence when Max strolled over.

  ‘Sophy, I’ll take you back; Tineke wants to talk to Karel about some concert or other, and Jan can go with them. You won’t mind waiting for a few minutes until everyone has gone, will you?’ He looked at Harry. ‘Nice of you to come at such short notice, Harry; a party’s never the same without you.’

  He made no attempt to move away, so that Sophy bade Harry goodbye with more friendliness than she would have done if she had been alone, and never hesitated when she was asked for her telephone number.

  Harry joined the last of the guests, and Max waved them an airy goodbye from the great front door, told Goeden to fetch the car, and went back to where Sophy was standing, studying the family tree painted over the great fireplace on the centre wall. She was not, in fact, observing it very closely, but thinking of the journey back to hospital with Max. She felt sure that he would hardly notice her; which was as much as to say how she would like to be noticed. She remembered a little proverb about half a loaf being better than no bread: it seemed as though the half loaf was to be her portion. She said brightly as he joined her, ‘This is interesting, isn’t it?’ and waved an arm at the crabbed writing.

  He barely glanced at it. ‘I should have thought you were too sensible a girl to have your head turned by someone as feather-brained as Harry.’

  Sophy thought he was teasing, looked at his face and realised that he wasn’t. He looked very angry indeed. She transferred her gaze back to the family tree as he continued bitingly,

  ‘He’s a good sort and great fun for a young giddy girl—but you...’ He left the rest of the sentence, like a subtle insult, hanging in mid-air.

  Sophy concentrated on the crabbed black letters on the wall before her. Maximilian van Oosterwelde, she read; born 1569; married Juliana van der Post. She read it several times, waiting for composure and the angry colour to leave her face. She drew a calming breath and said lightly, ‘I found him amusing. You forgot, Doctor, that I am neither young nor giddy— even if I were, Plain Janes don’t have their heads turned.’

  ‘I am not aware that I called you a Plain Jane,’ he said stiffly.

  Sophy achieved a laugh. ‘Nor did you,’ she said cheerfully. ‘But I am, you know. Anyway, Doctor, I can’t see what business it is of yours.’ She looked at him, opening her beautiful eyes, with their impossible eyelashes, very wide, so that he could see that she was angry too. He stared back at her; his eyes narrowed, so that she was unable to read their expression. He said coolly,

  ‘I stand in some sort of loco parentis to you while you are in Holland.’

  The colour she had so successfully banished came flooding back into her cheeks. ‘Unasked and unnecessary,’ she snapped. ‘I’m able to look after myself.’

  He laughed. ‘And what does your Mr John Austin say to that, I wonder?’ She gave him a sharp glance and met his mocking eyes. He said softly,

  ‘John Austin alias Morris. You should have chosen a better name, Sophy, but I didn’t give you much time, did I? And a bank manager from Harrogate— my dear girl you did let your imagination run away with you!’

  Sophy fixed her eyes on the family tree once more; she was really getting to know it rather well. ‘How did you find out?’ she asked gruffly.

  He shrugged wide shoulders. ‘You’re a poor liar. Now, about Harry...’

  Sophy swallowed the lump in her throat; she felt silly and humiliated, to burst into tears would have been a great comfort. She held them back resolutely, and was rewarded by the sound of Goeden’s measured tread crossing the hall, and said the first thing that came into her head, ‘I wonder what Juliana van der Post was like?’

  She heard Max laugh. ‘Snub-nosed and a cast in one eye, if we are to believe the family picture gallery. Maximilian loved her to distraction.’

  Sophy didn’t answer, but said goodnight to Goeden and went out to the waiting car, where she began a polite conversation about a variety of subjects, barely pausing for Max’s occasional Yes or No. But as they were approaching Utrecht he suddenly said, ‘My good girl, must you chat so persistently? Do stop!’

  She stopped. Then in rather a quavery voice. ‘I was always taught that it was ill-mannered to ignore your companion.’

  He ground the car to a halt on the side of the almost empty road. ‘Then I must rectify my ill manners at once.’ He pulled her quite urgently towards him and tilted her face up to meet his, and kissed her with a fierceness that took her breath. Then without a word, he drove on.

  At the hospital she had the door open before he could reach across her and with one foot poised outside the car, said breathlessly,

  ‘Thank you for a lovely party, sir. It was very kind of you to arrange it. Goodnight.’

  She didn’t wait, and heard him laughing as she fled inside, where Hans, who was on night duty, popped his cheerful face out of his little office and asked her if she had had a nice birthday. Sophy nodded, not trusting herself to speak, and fled through the hospital too, as though Max were after her. When she reached her room, she undressed in seconds, washed her face and dragged the pins from her hair and got into bed as though it was vital that she should not miss a single minute of her night’s sleep. It was a pity that she stayed awake all night.

  Chapter 8

  She looked simply frightful in the morning. The dark patches under her eyes emphasised just how washed-out was her face—she applied make-up with a lavish hand and then rubbed most of it off again; it merely served to show up the haggishness of her appearance. But strangely
, it didn’t matter. At breakfast she was greeted with a frank friendly envy, a good deal of sympathy because she had to go on duty, and a great many questions. Apparently everyone knew about the party; now they wanted to know how many guests there had been, and who they were and what the women wore, and whether the house was as beautiful as rumour would have. Sophy answered as best she could, in her curious mixture of basic English, sign language and a repetitive use of the few Dutch words she had managed to learn.

  It didn’t matter in the theatre either; she was gowned and masked before the men arrived. Karelvan Steen was the first to greet her as he accompanied the trolley with the first case into the theatre. He twiddled the knobs on his machine until the little coloured balls were exactly where he wanted them in their glass panels, and talked idly of the party, seemingly unnoticing of Sophy’s short, quiet replies. When Max came in, with Jan talking earnestly at his heels, she stopped in mid-sentence, said her good mornings in a stiff voice, and then lapsed into silence, taking care not to look at Max. Not that it would have mattered, for he made no attempt to look at her, but plunged into his work with businesslike concentration.

  It was while the surgeons were being gowned for the second case that Dr van Steen bent over the patient on the table between them, said to Sophy,

  ‘You’re free tomorrow evening, aren’t you?’

  Sophy cast him a look of astonishment which he didn’t see and said, ‘Yes.’

  ‘Tineke wanted to talk to you yesterday, but she didn’t have much chance. She wondered if you would spend tomorrow evening with her. She thought a run up to Spakenburg and then a meal at Hilversum. Her car’s not functioning, so I’ll take you both in mine.’

  Sophy hesitated, and he saw it and said gently, ‘I believe we should all enjoy it.’

  Sophy, aware of Max standing close by, pulling on his rubber gloves with careful deliberation while he watched her, said, with an enthusiasm she didn’t quite feel, ‘That sounds delightful. Thank you, I should like to come.’

  Dr van Steen said ‘Good,’ and then, ‘Ready when you are, Max.’

  The first case had gone smoothly. The second one had a jinx on it, right from the start. Jan got himself unsterile and had to be regowned, so that Sophy had to lean rather precariously over her trolley and hold the Spencer-Wells forceps while Max tied off, and then one of the nurses, stepping backwards, knocked over a swab bucket with a subdued crash which sounded thunderous in the quiet theatre, scattering its contents, so that the nurse had to creep around collecting swabs with her Cheatles, then do a recount with Sophy. Max ignored it all pointedly, and continued to talk to Karel van Steen, but Sophy was as aware of his irritation as if he had given her a sharp set-down; she wished in a way that he had, so that she could have felt resentful towards him. But she felt nothing but a professional sympathy when the straightforward operation for appendicitis turned out to be a Meckel’s diverticulum, something with exactly similar symptoms, but which took a good deal longer to operate upon.

  When at last the case was wheeled away, Max pulled off his gloves and said quietly, ‘Five minutes for coffee, Sister,’ then turned on his heel and strode away, with van Steen and Jan close behind. Sophy nodded to the junior nurse to follow them with the coffee tray, whipped off her own gloves and gown and went to scrub up again. Zuster Viske had already laid up the trolley for the next case, but the theatre had to be cleared and she had her sutures to prepare and the Mayo table to lay up; there would be no coffee for her that morning. Max was as good as his word. At the end of five minutes, he was back scrubbing up with Jan, and a minute or two later Dr van Steen came in with the patient. He settled down on his stool and looked at Sophy over his mask, and asked, ‘Had coffee, Sophy?’ and she shook her head and went on threading needles. At her nod, the nurses went in turn, one by one, for their own coffee; as the last one slid quietly back to her place in the theatre, Max asked silkily,

  ‘I presume there is a good reason for the nurses’ perambulations, Sister?’

  Sophy passed him a Key’s hernia director in a brisk manner, and said, no less briskly, ‘Nurses are having their coffee, sir.’

  He used the director, gave it back, and put his knife gently on the Mayo table before putting his hand out for gut. He said softly with an edge to his voice, ‘A— demonstration against my lack of consideration, perhaps.’ His eyes were bright, she met them with her own bewildered ones. ‘You felt that I needed a reminder of it.’

  Sophy held out the needle holder and he took it unhurriedly. She started to speak, but found to her horror that her throat was so full of sudden tears that she was unable to do so. She wiped the stitch scissors with tremendous care and put them within Jan’s reach, heard with a wild relief Dr van Steen’s cheerful voice embarking on some trivial argument which none the less needed a reply from Max, and gave her time to pull herself together. By the time the case had gone back to the ward, and the next and last one had been wheeled in, she was her usual calm, pleasant self. It was much later, when the afternoon list was finished and she was sitting in the cramped little office writing up the operation book, that Max came back into the theatre block and stopped at the open door. He stood looking at her, very much at his ease. She felt the colour creep into her face, but she held the pen steady in her hand and gave him a bright professional smile, and waited for him to speak.

  ‘I apologise for this morning, Sophy—I was in a filthy temper, but I had no right to visit it on your innocent head.’

  She smiled again; this time the warm friendly smile that had the power to change her face so much. She said quietly, ‘That’s all right, sir, the second case was troublesome.’

  ‘The second case had nothing to do with it,’ he said succinctly. ‘I was in a filthy temper long before that...since last night, in fact.’

  Sophy studied her neat handwriting in the book before her, and said carefully, ‘That’s quite all right too, sir.’

  ‘Is it?’ he asked, and something in his voice made her look up. He wasn’t apologetic any more; he looked sure of himself and very much master of the situation, and he was smiling.

  Her heart had jumped into her throat; she gulped it back, unable to look away from him. He settled himself more comfortably against the door frame and put his hands in his pockets.

  ‘There is something I must tell you,’ he began, ‘about Tineke and...’

  He broke off as the telephone rang and Sophy picked up the receiver, not sure if she was glad of the interruption or not, and said, ‘Sister Greenslade, Theatre,’ listened to the voice the other end, then said, ‘Yes, Directrice,’ and put the receiver back and got to her feet.

  ‘The Directrice wants me in the office at once. I must go.’ She looked at Max, hesitating, said ‘Goodnight sir,’ and went quickly past him without another word.

  Max wasn’t in theatre the following morning. Dr Vos was anaesthetising for a surgeon she hadn’t met before. He was younger than Max and put her at her ease in excellent English and with a facile charm. She was pleasantly friendly with him, her mind Ml of Max. He had been going to tell her something the previous evening, and although she didn’t want to think about it, she would have to, for she was sure that she knew what it was he had been going to say. The remembrance of his kiss was still vivid in her thoughts, and just as vivid was the memory of her own instinctive, unguarded response to it. He liked her enough to tell her about Tineke, and he would do it with great tact and kindliness, unaware that their friendship was anything but a casual one, brought about by circumstances. He had to be civil to her anyway, because of Uncle Giles...and the fire; emergencies like that made people more friendly than they might have been. She suddenly knew that she couldn’t bear to hear Max tell her about Tineke; she would take care to keep out of his way.

  They met that evening in the entrance hall under Hans’ fatherly eye. She was on her way to spend her promised evening with Tineke and Karel van Steen, dressed in the lambswool shirtwaister. It was a tawny colour, and went very well with t
he tweed coat, and she had fastened a velvet bow in her hair to give its mousiness a glow. Max caught her hand as they met and brought her to a halt and stood looking down at her, smiling.

  ‘Sophy, I want to talk to you.’

  She steadied her breath, silently deploring her dreadful habit of blushing, and managed a bright smile. ‘Good evening, sir... I...I can’t stop now; I’m going out with Tineke.’ She could have bitten out her tongue for reminding him.

  ‘Yes, I know.’ He was still holding her hand; not smiling now, a crease between his black brows. She took her hand gently away, and glanced at Hans, staring curiously at them; she didn’t think that he could hear, though.

  ‘I’d much rather you didn’t tell me,’ she said steadily. ‘Anyway, I know.’

  The crease became a frown. ‘You know? Who told you?’

  She said quietly, ‘That doesn’t matter, does it?’

  ‘No, but I didn’t realise that it was—public knowledge.’

  ‘I don’t believe that that is so,’ she replied seriously, ‘and I’ll not say anything...’

  A car hooted outside, and she looked through the door and saw Dr van Steen waiting.

  ‘I must go.’

  ‘Yes, of course, don’t let me keep you.’ He was all at once polite and withdrawn. Hans opened the door, and she went outside without looking back. It was only after she had been squeezed between Tineke and Karel and they were sliding through Utrecht that she began to wonder why Max hadn’t come out to the car with her; he had known that Tineke was there. She frowned, and Tineke asked ‘Tired?’ in her kind friendly voice. Sophy found it quite impossible not to like her, which, when she thought about it, was absurd.

  They went straight to Spakenburg. For early November, the evening was light, with a bright wide sky, the lemon-coloured horizon casting a pale golden glow over the fields. Sophy found Spakenburg everything it should be. They left the car and walked around the harbour, and then, more briskly, for it was chilly, along the path beside the water towards the Ijsselmeer so that Sophy could get a good view of the fishermen’s cottages on the other side of the harbour. There weren’t many people about, but those that were wore their old-world costume with an unselfconscious pride, as though they didn’t really belong in the twentieth century at all, and were faintly sorry for those that did. They looked content too. Sophy wondered what they thought of the tourists who came to stare, and said so out loud. Tineke stared at her, then said,