Visiting Consultant

by Neels, Betty

  ‘Sophy, I believe you like Holland. I don’t mean in the same way as the tourists do—they see the flowers and the costumes and the old houses, but you see the people, don’t you, and I think you want to understand us too. How nice.’

  She beamed at Sophy who said slowly, ‘Yes, I do like Holland, though I know nothing of it.’ And she thought of Max—Holland was his country and he loved it; so she wanted to love it too.

  They walked her round, standing patiently while she gazed her fill at anything that took her fancy, and answering her questions until it was too dark to see anything very clearly, when Karel decided that they should go on to Hilversum, where he had booked a table for dinner at the Clarion. He took mem along a quiet road alongside the dyke which led them eventually to Baarn and so to Hilversum, which even in the dark, looked delightful. The restaurant was delightful too. They dined deliciously and, Sophy thought, expensively, and with a leisure she seldom enjoyed in hospital.

  It was ten o’clock when they got up to go and the cold smote them as they walked to the car. It was a crisp night, with a hint of frost to come, and a moon struggling to peer through large woolly clouds. It was only ten miles or so to Utrecht and they went fast, talking happily together. Tineke and Karel got on well together; they must have known each other for a long time. Karel had mentioned that he and Max had been firm friends since the time they were small boys, presumably he knew about Tineke and Max too.

  Karel stopped the car outside the hospital entrance, and Sophy said her thanks and her goodnights and went inside to the dim entrance hall. There was no porter, and she wondered why, then saw the light streaming from the open doors of Casualty. He would be there, of course, helping with stretchers and being generally useful. She was almost level with the doors when Max came out. He stood still, looking huge against the gloom of the corridor, and saw her at the same time as she saw him. Her heart gave a joyful little leap when she noticed the look on his face; he looked glad—no, more than glad—to see her.

  ‘Just the woman I want,’ he said. He spoke as calmly as was his wont, but she sensed an urgency about his voice.

  ‘There’s an accident in—from a farm some miles out, so there’s been a delay getting them here. The two men are beyond hope, I’m afraid, but I can save the girl, I think. The thing is, Night Super and Night Sister are both tied up in Cas—they’re short of staff tonight; and I want to operate as soon as possible.’

  So that was why he had looked so glad to see her. Sophy said in as calm a voice as his, ‘Give me ten minutes to change, sir. What is it?’

  ‘Amputation below knee—a girl, eighteen years old.’ He saw her wince. ‘Yes, I know; but the bones are pulped for two inches at least. I’m afraid of gangrene—it happened in a farmyard, there’s bound to be infection. She’s had penicillin, of course, but I don’t dare risk it. If I can operate now, I can at least save the knee. She’s pretty fit and healthy. Jan’s run in a litre of blood.’ He turned away. ‘See you in ten minutes, then?’

  Nine minutes later Sophy was scrubbing up while a student nurse, Cheatle forceps in each hand, draped the trolleys for her and then fetched the instruments from the autoclave. Sophy was still arranging them in their neat, proscribed pattern when Dr Vos came in with the patient, and a minute later, Max and Jan Jansen. It didn’t take long, and while they were waiting for the porters to come and wheel the girl away to Intensive Care, Sophy went round the table and looked at the unconscious young face. Such a pretty face too; it must have received a great many admiring glances; now the glances would be pitying.

  Sophy nodded to the nurse to go with the patient and started clearing up. The men had gone, back to Cas, perhaps. She was quite alone, speeding around the theatre, making short work of it. She bundled the last of the sheets and towels into the laundry bin and went to the sink to scrub the instruments. Nurse would be back presently and could take over while she did the sharps and needles. She didn’t hear Max until he was standing beside her and it was too late to do anything about the tell-tale stains on her cheeks. As she looked up, startled, two tears trickled down to blot themselves out in the folds of the mask she had pushed beneath her chin. She said simply, in a watery voice, ‘She was only eighteen and so very pretty.’ She picked up a corner of her gown and scrubbed the tears away. I’m sorry, but I didn’t expect anyone back...’

  Max said very gently, ‘Sophy.’

  The one word said a whole sentence of understanding. She thought confusedly that one day he would use that voice when one of his children came to him, hurt or frightened. She could have cried again at the thought. Max picked up a brush and began to scrub the instruments in the sink and after a minute she said in a little ghost of her usual voice,

  ‘You can’t do that, sir, it’s—it’s not proper.’

  He didn’t laugh. ‘No, perhaps it’s not, but neither is it proper that you should be here long after your bedtime.’

  After that they worked together in friendly silence until the last instrument was done just as the nurse came back to sort them into their respective sets again. Sophy moved over to the sharps and needles waiting for her on the operating table, and Max followed her and helped her with those too. Presently they said goodnight to the nurse and Sophy took off her gown and went along to the office to get her cap and cuffs.

  ‘What about some tea?’ Max asked from the door, but when she turned to go back to the tiny kitchen, he said quickly, ‘No, I’ll get it while you write up your books.’ He was back very quickly. ‘You look surprised, do you not think that I can make tea?’ Sophy shook her head, and smiled a little, and he added, ‘You don’t know me very well, Sophy.’

  They drank their tea slowly, talking very little, but over their second cups, when Sophy began to look more cheerful, he said, ‘That girl—our patient of this evening—shall have the finest leg I can get her. There’s a chap I know in Vienna—I’ll send her to him—in six months’ time you won’t be able to tell which leg is which.’

  ‘I shan’t be here to see her,’ said Sophy flatly, ‘but I know you’ll do all you can for her.’ She piled the cups and saucers together. ‘Thank you for the tea, sir,’ she said politely, and got up to go. ‘Goodnight.’ She was half way down the corridor when she turned round and walked back again to where he was still sitting in the office. ‘You’re a kind and good man, Doctor,’ she said breathlessly, and went again, angry with herself for giving way to an impulse.

  Hours later, in bed, she remembered that she had left him to wash up the tea cups. The idea of it made her smile, and she turned over and went to sleep, still smiling. She awoke before it was light and remembered that Zuster Smid was due back in nine days’ time, which, she told herself sensibly, was a very good thing.

  Chapter 9

  Harry telephoned the next afternoon. He had the temerity to ring the theatre block direct, and it was unfortunate that Max should have picked up the receiver. They were having a snatched cup of tea after a hard list that had cut their dinner hour to a mere fifteen minutes and Sophy was tired, so were Karel and Jan. Only Max was his usual calm, unhurried self. He took the call and passed the receiver to Sophy with a quiet ‘For you, Sister.’ She had been struggling with the off-duty rota while she drank her tea, and took it with a little tut of annoyance at being disturbed. She had almost forgotten Harry; now she listened helplessly to his invitation to the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. He had tickets for the following evening, he said, and they had been difficult to get. It would be churlish to refuse. She accepted and put the receiver back in its cradle and encountered Max’s stare. Their conversation at Huys Oosterwelde was very clear in her mind and she saw by his little mocking smile that he had remembered it too, and she blushed hotly under his cool blue eyes. He said genially. ‘I must tell Harry to ring the Nurses’ Home next time,’ and she frowned, her silky brows making a thunderous black line above indignant eyes. How dared he suppose that there would be a next time, anyway? Couldn’t he see that she had been unable to refuse? Apparently h
e couldn’t, for he went on smoothly,

  ‘I’m glad you’re seeing something of Holland, Sophy. Amsterdam night life?’ he queried lightly.

  Sophy got up; there were still two more cases and it was almost four o’clock.

  ‘No,’ she said pleasantly, ‘there’s a concert at the Concertgebouw.’ She pronounced it atrociously, but no one drew attention to it. She tried so hard to twist her tongue around the awkward words; they had, by tacit consent, got into the habit of unravelling her mutilated Dutch and correcting it unobtrusively as opportunity occurred, so that she wouldn’t feel discouraged.

  Very nice, too,’ Max was non-committal. Karel gave a grunt which could have meant anything; she could see that Jan Jansen was about to embark upon one of the informative lectures he was so fond of delivering. She took a step towards the door and said repressively, ‘No, Jan, I haven’t time,’ in exactly the voice she used when Benjamin was being troublesome, and he grinned sheepishly. Max had opened the door for her, and as she passed him their glances met—his eyes were warm and dancing with laughter, he said softly, ‘Haste thee, Nymph, and take with thee Jest and youthful Jollity...’ He added, ‘A misquotation, but apt.’

  Sophy paused in the doorway and thought hard. ‘ “And I leave you where you are, for I know that wheresoe’er I go, others will punctually come for ever and ever.” That’s misquoted too, but just as apt!’ She could hear him chuckling as she sped down the corridor.

  They said little more to each other for the rest of the afternoon. Max, leaving the skin sutures for Jan to do on the last case, pulled off his, gloves, thanked Sophy quietly, said a careless ‘Dag’ to the others, and went away. She went off duty herself an hour later, to be met by Janie and Annie who hustled her cheerfully to her room to change out of uniform, then took her to the cinema. It was a French film with Dutch sub-titles; a combination which kept her thoughts fully occupied for the next hour or so.

  There was a letter from home the next morning. The list wasn’t starting until nine o’clock—she would have time to skim through it before she scrubbed up. They were all well, wrote Grandmother Greenslade, although Sinclair had had a bad cold—the Blot and Titus were thriving. Penny had been to the theatre with Bill; Benjamin had broken the neighbours’ window. There had been a letter from Uncle Giles, who was getting so much better that he was talking of work again, though they hadn’t made much progress with the theatre. The small snippets of news made home seem very near. She put the letter in her pocket to read at her leisure, and wished Dr van Jong a cheerful good morning; he would be operating all day. She went to scrub up, carefully not wondering what Max was doing, and concentrating so fiercely on her job that van Jong, who was a hard taskmaster despite his charm, conceded to Dr Vos that she certainly knew her job, although she was a foreigner.

  As the day advanced Sophy’s reluctance to spend the evening with Harry grew. She went off duty, walking slowly, and as slowly got out of her uniform, bathed and changed into the lambswool dress; she seemed to have worn it rather a lot lately, but there was only a week left now, and she wasn’t likely to go out much more.

  Harry was waiting when she went downstairs to the entrance. He was sitting in a Karmann Ghia coup6, its vivid mustard yellow making a splodge of colour in the dusk-filled courtyard. Sophy, replying to his loud and hearty greeting with sedate friendliness, got into the car, thinking that it was exactly the sort of vehicle Harry might be expected to own. She told him so, and he laughed as though she had been very witty. It was easy to be gay in such cheerful company—he had bonhomie enough for two—and before they were clear of Utrecht Sophy’s good spirits had reasserted themselves. Harry drove well and fast, with a light-hearted tendency to avoid accidents by a hair’s breadth at the very last minute. Sophy held her breath to begin with, then decided that it would serve no good purpose to admit to nervousness. All the same, it was a relief when he fetched up safely near the Concertgebouw, parked the car, and then walked her the short distance to a cafe’ in a small side street, where they dined very well indeed on chicken on a spit, preceded by melon and followed by a coupe Clo-Clo, a confection of whipped cream and chestnuts and ice cream which Sophy chose because she found the name amusing. Harry was amusing too and a delightful companion, and even though she knew his compliments weren’t in the least sincere, it was pleasant to receive them.

  They talked so much that they were very nearly late arriving at the Concertgebouw. Sophy barely had time to look around her before the performance started. It was Brahms, and she sat absorbed in the music, forgetful of where she was or who she was with. At the interval, her head still full of music, she got up obediently and accompanied Harry to the bar, which was crowded. He wedged her against the wall, and turned to go to the bar.

  ‘Stay where you are,’ he said. ‘Will a Dubonnet suit you? It seems to me you need something to bring you back to earth again.’

  She wondered if she was being a dull companion and if he was regretting his invitation. Perhaps Max had been right after all. She stood very still, feeling a little lost and conscious that her dress didn’t quite meet the occasion. She let her eyes roam, studying the women’s clothes. This enthralling pastime was unexpectedly cut short by the appearance of a spotless white shirt front most effectively blocking her view of her surroundings. She went on staring at it as Max spoke.

  ‘Won’t you join us, Sophy?’

  She tilted her head, breathing rather fast and looking pink, but her voice was cool enough. ‘Thank you, no. Harry told me to wait.’

  He cocked a mocking brow. ‘And you’re doing exactly what you are told? You surprise me.’ He sounded amused. ‘Join us just the same. Harry will find you.’

  He caught her inexorably by the arm and made his way through the groups of people to a small table. Adelaide was there with her husband, so was Tineke and sitting beside her, Karel van Steen. The other member of the party, a good-looking woman in her thirties, Max introduced as Professor van Essen’s sister. Sophy felt shy; the women were in evening clothes—simple, well-cut and exactly right for the occasion. The men, in black ties, looked right too—why couldn’t Max have left her where she was? But apparently her clothes didn’t matter; the circle around the table welcomed her wholeheartedly. She sat down on the chair Max provided for her, between Adelaide and Tineke.

  ‘We saw you come in,’ said Adelaide softly. ‘We thought you were going to be late.’

  Sophy knit puzzled brows. ‘How did you know I was coming?’ she enquired.

  Adelaide was hunting in her bag for something and didn’t look up. ‘Oh, Max told us when he telephoned and asked if we had a place to spare in the loge. I had to get Coenraad’s sister at the last minute to make up the numbers.’

  She stopped as Harry arrived with the drinks. He seemed delighted to see them all; he gave Sophy her drink and barely waited for her thanks before plunging into animated conversation with Tineke. Sophy sipped her drink and wished that she had on the right sort of dress, then looked up to find Max’s eye on her and knew by his expression that he knew what she was thinking and was amused.

  The second part of the programme was Berlioz and ended far too quickly. Sophy followed Harry outside on to the pavement and almost at once lost him. She stood still, being bumped into and apologised to by everyone else, who had been sensible enough to hold hands or something. She teetered on to her toes, trying to see over people’s heads without success, not sure what to do, and when Max appeared beside her, she turned to him with relief. ‘Lost?’ he asked.

  ‘No, not really, but we got parted at the entrances— I think we were going to the left,’ she added hopefully.

  He took her arm without a word, and made his way slowly to the edge of the crowd, where they found Harry. He waved when he saw them, and said cheerfully, ‘What a mass of people—couldn’t see you anywhere, Sophy, so I got out of it. I knew you’d find a way sooner or later.’ He nodded to Max. ‘Lucky you bumped into each other, wasn’t it?’ he observed light-heartedly, then
turned rather pointedly to Sophy. ‘How about a nice little supper after all that? There’s a jolly good night club where we can dance for a few hours.’

  Sophy hesitated, shocked to find that she didn’t want to go, but before she could reply Max interposed, ‘How fortunate that I’m here; it seems you didn’t get my message—I left it at the front door on my way out. Zuster Viske’s off with a heavy cold, so you’ll have to be on call from midnight.’

  Sophy, relieved and faintly puzzled, heard the unmistakable ring of authority in his voice—one that was seldom heard and as seldom disobeyed. She said contritely, ‘I’m sorry, Harry. I shall have to go straight back, I’m afraid. I’ve spoilt your evening.’

  He shrugged his shoulders and laughed a little, and said with a good grace, ‘You hospital people are all alike: gluttons for work. We’d better go before the place falls apart without you.’

  The journey back was more or less silent. Harry was just as charming, but it was all too obvious that for him, at least, it had been a wasted evening. At the hospital, he bade Sophy an airily friendly farewell, with vague references to next time, but she knew that he wouldn’t ask her out again—girls who had to rush back to work in the middle of an evening had no place in his easy-going world. She waved to him from the top of the steps and went inside, to be greeted by Hans, who was on late duty. She had almost passed him with a cheerful goodnight, when she remembered Max’s message, and asked about it. Hans looked blank. ‘There’s been no such message, Sister. There must be some mistake. Why, Zuster Viske was here not an hour ago, posting a letter, and she told me she was on call.’