by Betty Neels
The operation was a complete success. The professor, with no difficulty at all, removed the coins through the smallest of incisions which would leave only the faintest of scars, and when the wound had been clipped, peered down his little niece’s gullet with his gastroscope to make sure that nothing had been left behind, a state of affairs confirmed by the portable X-ray machine, trundled into the theatre before Nina was lifted on to the trolley ready to take her back to her bed. Abigail had stood by the anaesthetist during the operation, doing what was asked of her quickly and competently, her mind deliberately closed to any thought other than those connected with the job on hand, and back in the small hospital room once more, with Nina in bed, there was plenty for her to do and no time to think of her own affairs.
She had regulated the drip, taken Nina’s pulse and charted it, inspected the tiny wound and written up the chart by the time the professor came in. He had Henk with him, and that young man, who had had no chance to speak to her that morning, said, ‘Hullo, Abigail, nice to see you again. We must get together …’ and Abigail murmured something, conscious of the professor’s eyes upon her and wishing Henk wasn’t quite so pleased to see her. But when the two men had gone she brightened a little, cheered by the thought that a little competition was supposed to be a good thing, and then chided herself for being a fanciful fool; the professor didn’t care anything at all for her; she was a useful nurse, probably he knew how she felt about him and took advantage of it. It had been stupid of her to come running the moment he called … and as for his kisses, there were a dozen good reasons why a man kissed a girl, and none of them necessarily because he loved her.
She was kept busy for the rest of the morning, for Nina, once she was conscious, was rather cross and inclined to cry as well. Abigail, watching her drop off to sleep after she had given her an injection, was glad to go off duty for a few hours.
She had the same room in the Home as she had had previously. She unpacked her case, changed rapidly into her outdoor clothes and hurried through the well-remembered streets to Mrs Macklin’s house. It would be nice to see that lady again; they would have time for a chat and a cup of tea before she was due back on duty. She stopped at the baker’s shop and bought some cakes before turning into the peace and quiet of the Begijnhof.
Mrs Macklin received her with rapturous surprise. ‘My dear,’ she exclaimed as Abigail took off her coat, ‘I knew you would be back, but I didn’t expect you as soon as this—what has happened?’
Abigail told her while they had tea, toasting themselves round the little stove and drinking cup after cup of the strong brew Mrs Macklin liked.
‘Dear Dominic,’ she declared when Abigail had finished her tale, ‘how like him to go tearing off for hundreds of miles to help someone. He adores Nina, of course, you’ll have seen that for yourself, my dear, and he’s devoted to Odilia—she’s fifteen years younger than he is, you know, and they’ve always been very close. He missed her very much when Dirk was appointed to Bilbao—Dirk’s a good man too, did you meet him?’
‘Yes—I liked him too, and I thought Odilia was charming.’
‘You say Dirk’s coming up to fetch Nina?’
‘Yes, I think so, though I think it all depends on the baby—when it arrives. Nina won’t take long to get over this.’
‘No. I suppose Dominic will take her back with him to his house when she can be moved, until her father can come for her. He’ll need someone to look after her, though.’ She gave Abigail a shrewd look and Abigail, aware of what her companion was thinking, said nothing. It wasn’t very likely that the professor would ask her to go back to his house with Nina; a couple of weeks and she would be on her way back to England.
Nina was still sleeping when she got back and there was little to do but sit by the bed getting up from time to time to do the small tasks necessary for the little girl’s treatment. The professor had come in again just after she had got back and gone again, well satisfied with his small relative’s progress. He had hardly spoken to Abigail beyond leaving her fresh instructions and asking her to tell the night nurse that he would come again about ten o’clock. He scarcely looked at her as he bade her a quiet good night.
Nina recovered rapidly; long before she was able to eat them, she was demanding impossible and unsuitable meals of sausages and chips, pea soup and pofferjes, delicious, indigestible fried dough balls. Abigail, plying her with suitably milky foods, heaved a sigh of relief when ice-cream, often demanded, was allowed.
Nina was getting up each day now, sitting in a chair, swathed in blankets and wearing the new dressing-gown her uncle had bought her. It was pale pink and frilly and quilted and there were slippers to match. She was a pretty child and as beguiling as most small girls of that age, it was no wonder that he was fond of her. In a few more days she would be able to play with the children in the ward; the only reason she didn’t do so now was because she might be tempted to eat the sweets and cakes their mothers brought in for them. And during these days, the professor came and went, saying little to Abigail that wasn’t to do with her work until one evening when he walked in just before the children’s bedtime, to find Abigail, with Nina and several other children from the ward.
Nina was curled up on Abigail’s lap, the other children lay about her feet, rolled up or stretched out according to their several whims, each of them had a bulging cheek as they sucked on a bedtime sweet. Abigail was singing to them; she had a voice like a little girl’s, rather high and breathy and sometimes off key. She was singing them nursery rhymes and children’s songs which she had almost forgotten so that she had to sing da-de-da from time to time, but as none of them understood a word she was singing anyway, it really didn’t matter. She was half way through ‘Cry Baby Bunting’ for the second time when Nina lifted her head from her shoulder and cried: ‘Oom Dominic!’
Abigail stopped singing, as though the thread of her voice had been cut by the professor’s scissors. He advanced into the centre of the small room, while the children, quite prepared to accept him as their uncle too, all began to talk at once. It was strange, thought Abigail, watching him, how they saw through his austere look and took no notice of his frown at all; he waved to them now and pulled a hideous face so that they roared with laughter as he came to a halt before her and bent to kiss his niece.
‘I liked the one about the king in his counting house,’ he remarked.
She had sung that one quite five minutes previously. ‘Have you been here all that while?’ she wanted to know. ‘I would have stopped …’
‘Yes, I thought you would have done.’
She said miserably, ‘I wish you hadn’t—I can’t sing.’
‘No, but it sounded charming, all the same.’
He picked Nina up and enquired of her how she was and left Abigail to meditate on sounding charming even when one sang habitually out of tune. Just then Zuster Ritsma came in and he went away with her to look at a sick child, leaving Abigail to shoo the children back into the ward and Nina into her bed.
It was two mornings later that he told Nina that she would be going home with him the next day. Abigail was making the bed, and Nina, sprawled on the floor, was playing with a doll, which she threw down to rush at her uncle and embrace his knees, shouting rapturously.
‘Noisy little brat,’ said her uncle fondly. ‘You will accompany her, if you please, Abigail. Mevrouw Boot and Bollinger have enough to do without having this imp to look after—besides, they’re a little elderly.’
Abigail folded a blanket with precise, neat movements. ‘For how long, sir?’
‘I can’t tell you that. Why do you want to know? Have you another case?’
‘No. I was just curious. Of course I’ll come.’
‘Odilia had a son last night, so as soon as she is up and about, Dirk will come and fetch Nina.’
Abigail smiled widely. ‘Oh, I am glad, how lovely for them—Odilia is quite well?’
‘Yes, she telephoned me an hour after he was born. Dirk is na
turally delighted.’
‘I can well imagine it. I suppose men want sons …’ She could have bitten out her tongue when she saw the bleakness of his face. He turned away and when he spoke again his voice was without expression. ‘I’ll see the Directice about you leaving tomorrow, Nurse Trent—Zuster Ritsma will give you all the details.’
He walked away without another word.
She didn’t pretend to herself that she hadn’t hoped to go with Nina when the little girl left the hospital; she allowed herself to feel happy about it, but only in moderation, for the professor hadn’t shown himself particularly pleased to have her. She supposed that she would stay ten days at the most, and then Nina would go back to Spain and she would be back in London again, looking for another case. Professor de Wit, when she had gone to see him one afternoon, had urged her to remain in Amsterdam. ‘For,’ he had said, ‘Dominic must have any number of patients who require a nurse, you could be employed for months to come,’ and she had taken heart from his words, hoping each time that she saw the professor that he might suggest this, but he never had done so. She packed her case with the few clothes she had with her and which she now heartily hated, and prepared to leave the hospital. There was another thing—she had received no salary, and because the professor had been so irritable when she had offered to pay back the surplus from her travelling expenses, she hesitated to say anything about it now. Perhaps he intended to pay her when she left Amsterdam. In the meantime, she was running low again, and Bolly had had nothing for some weeks.
They left after lunch the next day, with a jubilant Nina, her clips out, carried through the hospital in the professor’s arms, and when he set her down in the entrance hall and she began to jig around with excitement, he exclaimed, laughing:
‘No one would believe that I carved you open such a short time ago,’ to which sally she screamed with laughter and asked to be told, for the hundredth time, how exactly he had done it.
He was called away on some urgent business or other soon after that, and they went home with Jan in a Mercedes she hadn’t seen before, to be welcomed by Mevrouw Boot and Bollinger, but of the professor there was no sign for the rest of the afternoon.
CHAPTER EIGHT
SHE WAS TAKEN TO the room she had had before and Nina had the room next to it; a room as charming as Abigail’s and thoughtfully provided with a miniature chair to accommodate Nina’s smallness, and a table to go with it. It took most of the afternoon to arrange her toys and dolls in exactly the positions she wished and by the time she had had her tea she was tired. Abigail carried her off to her room with the promise of a bedtime story if she was a good girl, then undressed the small creature and bathed her with a good deal of giggling and chatter, for they understood each other very well by now, even though they mostly spoke different languages. She was in bed, with a bowl of bread and milk, nicely flavoured with sugar and cinnamon, by way of supper, and Abigail sitting on the bed beside her, telling her, in English of course, all about the old woman who lived in a shoe, by seven o’clock. The tale took a long time to tell, because almost every word had to be explained, which meant searching for it in Abigail’s dictionary. They were hugging each other with merriment over Abigail’s peculiar way of pronouncing even the simplest Dutch word, when the door opened and the professor came in.
He said pleasantly enough, ‘Good evening, Nurse Trent, I see that you have settled in,’ and went to bend over his niece, to be hugged and kissed and chatted to while Abigail got up and went to the pillow cupboard against one wall and busied herself putting away Nina’s clothes.
It was to be a ‘Nurse Trent’ evening, she supposed a little sourly. Come to that, it would probably be no evening at all; she hadn’t the least idea if she was to take her meals with him or have them served alone, or if she was to have them with Bolly and Mevrouw Boot. She decided not, remembering how annoyed he had been when she had used the tradesmen’s entrance. She shut the cupboard door in time to hear him say:
‘I dine at seven, Abigail. I hope you will keep me company.’
She said thank you in a polite voice which hid her pleasure, while she brooded over the difficulty of falling in with his moods. In the space of ten minutes she had been both Miss Trent and Abigail; she found it a little wearing on her nerves.
They were half way through their soup—hare soup and home-made, as Bollinger informed her as he served it, and they were alone in the elegant dining room. Bollinger had gone back to the kitchen to see about the next course, and the professor, making polite conversation, had fallen silent, and she, who had been turning over in her mind his insistence on calling her Miss Trent, found herself voicing her thoughts.
‘I can’t think why you will persist in calling me Miss Trent with one breath and Abigail with the next,’ she remarked suddenly. She looked at him as she spoke and he was neither frowning nor smiling the faint sneering smile she so disliked.
He said simply, ‘I told you once before. I forget.’
‘Forget what?’ she persisted.
‘You may have restored my faith in women, Abigail, but it’s been so long—I’m not quite used to it, perhaps I haven’t quite learned to trust.’ He paused and smiled at her across the table, and for fear that she would give herself away she said a little shortly, ‘I haven’t the least idea what you mean,’ and wished that she had never started the conversation, while at the same time longing for him to go on. It was a pity that Bollinger came back just then with the Boeuf Bourguignonne, served, as it should be, in a brown glazed casserole; it smelled delicious and she was hungry, and so, she expected, was her host. Abigail ate with appetite and abandoned her questions for just sufficient polite conversation to make for good manners.
There was fruit tart next; an elaborate dish which not only contained fruit but cream and eggs and cream cheese. When the professor pressed her to a second helping, she hesitated. ‘It was delicious …’ she began.
‘Then have some more—I don’t think you’ve been eating enough, you’ve got thinner.’
He was right; she had been eating as sparingly as possible because she had had to pay for her meals in hospital and she was counting every cent now. She had told herself bracingly that it was a good thing, for she was far too plump, but she had sometimes been a little hungry. She passed her plate; in a week or two she would probably be on short commons again.
They had their coffee in the little room where she had had tea with Bollinger and when she had handed him the delicate Meissen cup and saucer he said blandly:
‘We were talking about you.’
‘No, not really.’ She spoke too quickly, but it made no difference, for he went on just as though she hadn’t spoken.
‘You didn’t understand what I meant, Abigail. Will it help if I call you Abigail all the time?’
‘You mean you don’t dislike me any more?’
She was unprepared for his explosive, ‘Dislike you? My dear girl, I have never …’
She cut in ruthlessly, ‘Oh yes, you have, from the very first time we met. I don’t know why—perhaps you’re one of those men who can’t bear plain girls. I don’t mind being plain—not any more, now I’m used to it, but you don’t have to make it so obvious …’
He was looking at her gravely, his eyebrows arched, and she sensed that he was laughing silently, which irked her.
‘Your eyes are lovely—you have a dimple, did you know? and the sweetest smile.’
‘Which hardly adds up to good looks,’ she answered him crisply. ‘If you don’t mind, we won’t talk about me. How is your sister?’
He followed her lead without apparent regret and presently excused himself on the grounds of work to do. She sat on alone for another hour or two, staring into the fire, deep in thought. She had won his friendship; she was almost sure about that, and perhaps, just a little, his regard.
She saw him only briefly the following day; just long enough to be told his wishes concerning Nina. There was little enough nursing to do, for the little girl
was almost well again and full of life and mischief—it was largely a question of keeping her amused and making sure that she didn’t tire herself out. As he left the room, the professor said:
‘I’ll be away for a day or so, Abigail, so please feel free to go wherever you wish in my house. Bollinger will look after you. Nina will need more clothes, I imagine, take her to ‘t Kleuterhuis in P. C. Hooftstraat and get what you need and have the account sent to me—if she needs shoes, there’s a good shop in the same street—Pennocks; they can send in their account too. Jan will take you if you wish it.’
They shopped two days later, with Jan driving them in the Mercedes, for the professor had taken the Rolls, spending the morning in the most agreeable fashion to them both, buying, without bothering too much about the prices, a new outfit for Nina and some red shoes which she had set her heart on. They went back to the house for lunch and afterwards Abigail tucked her small charge up for a nap, left Bollinger on guard, and went out for her hour or two’s off-duty.
She went to Mrs Macklin’s, and that lady was delighted to see her.
‘Sit down,’ she invited, ‘and tell me all your news,’ and Abigail took the chair opposite the old lady’s in the small, overwarm room.
‘Dominic told me that he intended asking you to remain with Nina until her father could come to fetch her, and I told him he was wise to do so, after all, what would he do with a three-year-old to look after and your Bollinger and Mevrouw Boot would spoil her hopelessly—besides,’ she added dryly, ‘his well-ordered household would have been chaos. He spends most of his days working, but that doesn’t prevent him from expecting—and getting—a perfection of comfort which most of us only dream about. You like his house, my dear?’