Britannia All at Sea

by Betty Neels

The linen cupboard was cosily warm and the frosted glass of its narrow window shut out the grey November morning. Britannia made herself comfortable on a laundry basket and poured her coffee. Bridget was one of the many people in the hospital who liked her; the coffee was hot and milky and two biscuits had been sneaked out of Sister’s tin. Britannia munched and swallowed and thought in a vague way about Professor Luitingh van Thien; an ill-tempered man, and arrogant, she considered, then looked up in astonishment as he opened the door and walked in. And over and above that, she discovered with an almighty shock, the man she wished to marry; she had been in and out of love quite a few times, as any healthy-minded girl of twenty-four or so would, but never had she felt like this. Nevertheless, all she said in a mild voice was: ‘You should have knocked, Professor.’

  The cold eyes studied hers. ‘Why?’

  She said with some asperity: ‘Manners.’

  His thick dark brows rose, and then: ‘But I have none,’ and he went on deliberately, ‘I am getting on for forty, unmarried, rich and something of a hermit; I need please no one.’

  ‘How very sad,’ observed Britannia with sincerity. ‘Did you want something?’

  The lids drooped over his eyes. ‘Yes. I also wish to ask you a question. Why Britannia?’

  She took a sip of her cooling coffee and stared at him over the mug’s rim. ‘My parents decided that with a name like Smith they should—should compensate me.’

  He broke into such a roar of laughter that she exclaimed: ‘Oh, hush, do—if Sister hears you she’ll be in to see…’

  His brows rose again. ‘Chance acquaintances over a cup of coffee?’

  ‘Put like that it sounds very respectable, but it wouldn’t do, you know. Visiting professors and staff nurses don’t meet in linen cupboards.’

  ‘You flatter yourself, Miss Smith. I cannot recall inviting you to meet me.’

  She took another sip of coffee. ‘Very prickly,’ she observed, ‘but I quite see why. There’s no need for you to stay,’ she added kindly, ‘I’ve answered your question.’ He looked so surprised that she went on: ‘I’m sure that no one speaks to you like that, but it won’t harm you, you know.’

  He smiled, and she wasn’t sure if she liked the smile. ‘I stand corrected, don’t I?’ He put a large square hand on the door. ‘And talking of manners, you didn’t offer me coffee, Miss Smith.’

  ‘You’ve just had it,’ she pointed out, and added: ‘sir.’

  ‘Yes. A cup of vilely brewed liquid, curdled by Sister Mack’s conversation. What an unkind woman!’ He eyed the almost empty coffee pot as he spoke and Britannia said with real sympathy:

  ‘The kitchen maid makes super coffee—I always have it alone on round days. I enjoyed mine.’

  He opened the door. ‘Heartless girl,’ he remarked coldly, and went out.

  Britannia poured herself the last of the coffee. She had forgotten to apologise for sending him out of the sluice, but her whole mind had been absorbed by her sudden uprush of feeling when he had come in so unexpectedly. She frowned, worrying that she would never have the chance to do so now—she wasn’t likely to see him again, at least not to speak to. ‘And that’s negative thinking, my girl,’ she admonished herself out loud. ‘If you want to see him again, you must work at it.’

  A heartening piece of advice, which she knew quite well was quite hollow. The professor wasn’t the kind of man to be chased, even if the girl chasing him had made up her mind to marry him. She sighed; probably she would have to rely on Fate, and that lady was notoriously unpredictable. She picked up her tray and bore it back to the kitchen, then crossed the landing to Sister’s office. The door stood half open; everyone had gone, Mr Hyde, his firm and his handsome colleague. She might as well get Dora’s unfortunate little episode dealt with at once. Undeterred by Sister’s cross voice bidding her to go in, she opened the door wider and entered.

  Fate at least allowed her to see him again, although the circumstances might have been more propitious; it was quite late in the afternoon when the patient returned to the ward and by then Sister Mack, never the sunniest of persons, was in a quite nasty mood. She had an evening’s work before her and instead of being refreshed by a free afternoon, she had been hard at it doing dressings, medicine rounds and writing the beginnings of the day report, while Britannia, as she put it, had been idling in theatre. Britannia hadn’t been idling at all, but she knew better than to protest. She had rushed back to the ward while the patient was in the Recovery Room and broken the news to her superior that ICU was up to its neck with a bad car crash and the patient would be coming straight back to his own bed. So she was engrossed in a variety of urgent tasks to do with the well-being of the patient when Mr Hyde and the professor arrived at the bedside. They were still in their theatre gear; shapeless white smocks and trousers; the professor, being the size he was, looking as though he might burst every seam although his dignity remained unimpaired. He barely nodded at Britannia before bending over the young man. She handed Mr Hyde the observation sheets she had been keeping, answered his questions with brief clarity, and stood silently until the two men had made their examination. Everything was just as it should be, they told her, she was to continue the treatment which had been ordered—and what, she was asked, were the arrangements for the night?

  ‘There will be a special on at nine o’clock, sir,’ said Britannia, and thought longingly of that hour, still some time ahead—tea, and her shoes off and her feet up…

  It was disconcerting to her when the professor asked: ‘You have been off duty?’ because unless he was blind and deaf, which he wasn’t, he would have seen her and heard her during the course of the afternoon; indeed, he had stared at her in theatre so intently that she had felt twelve feet tall and outsize to boot.

  She handed Mr Hyde her pen so that he could add something to his notes and said composedly: ‘No. I can make it up later in the week.’

  ‘No tea?’ And when she shook her head: ‘A paragon among nurses, Miss Britannia Smith. Let us hope that you will get your just reward.’ His voice was bland and the smile she didn’t like was back again. She wondered what his real smile was like and wished lovingly that he wasn’t quite so difficult. She said a little severely: ‘You have no need to turn me into a martyr, Professor. I shall do very well.’

  The two surgeons went presently; the professor’s casual nod seemed positively churlish compared with Mr Hyde’s courteous thanks and genial good evening. Britannia, fiddling expertly with tubes, mused sadly on her day. Surely when one met the man of one’s dreams, it should be the happiest day of one’s life? If that were so, then hers had fallen sadly short of that.

  Sister went to supper at seven o’clock, leaving a student nurse in charge of the ward with the remark that Staff Nurse Smith was there and able to cope with anything which might turn up; she was still bad-tempered at the loss of her off-duty, and the fact that Britannia couldn’t leave her patient didn’t seem to have struck her, nor did it strike her that Britannia might like her supper too, for when she returned from her meal she finished the report, gave it to the night staff when they came on, and pausing only long enough to tell Britannia that she was worn out with her day’s work, hurried off duty. The special wasn’t coming on duty for another hour; Britannia, dealing with the dozens of necessary chores for her patient, hardly noticed where that hour went. Fred had been down earlier, he came again now, expressed his satisfaction as to the patient’s condition, told Britannia with the casual concern of an old friend that her hair was coming down, and went away.

  She still had no time to have done anything to her hair when she at last got off duty. Men’s Surgical was on the first floor and she wandered down the staircase to the front hall, listening vaguely to the subdued sounds around her; the faint tinkle of china as the junior night nurses collected up bedtime drinks, the sudden distant wail of some small creature up on the children’s unit above her, the creak of trolleys and the muffled to-ing and fro-ing of the night staff. She yawned hu
gely, gained the last stair and turned, her eyes on the ground, to go down the narrow passage which would take her to the Nurses’ Home. She was brought up short by something large and solid—Professor Luitingh van Thien.

  ‘Put on that cloak,’ he advised her in a no-nonsense voice. ‘We are going out.’

  Britannia, aware of the intense pleasure of seeing him again, opened her mouth, closed it and then opened it again to say: ‘I can’t—my hair!’

  He gave her a considered look. ‘A mess. Why do women always worry about their hair? No one is going to look at you.’

  She was forced to agree silently and with regret; not that she minded about that but because he didn’t consider her worth looking at.

  He had taken her hospital cape from her arm and flung it around her shoulders.

  ‘And you have no need to look like that; you are a handsome creature who can manage very well without elaborate hairstyles or other such nonsense.’

  She was torn between pleasure at being called a handsome creature—even though it put her strongly in mind of some outsized horse—and annoyance at his casual dismissal of her appearance. ‘I don’t think I want to go out,’ she told him calmly.

  ‘Tea? Hot buttered toast? Sandwiches? Are you not famished?’

  Her mouth watered, but: ‘I can make myself a pot of tea…’

  She could have saved her breath; she was swept across the hall and out into the cold November night and walked briskly down a back lane or two and into Ned’s Café, a small, brightly lit place much frequented by the hospital staff in need of a hasty snack or cup of coffee.

  Britannia, seated willy-nilly at a small plastic table in the middle of the crowded place, put up a hand to tuck in her hair. ‘How did you know about this place?’ she enquired, and thought how like a man to choose to sit where everyone could see them, and her with her hair streaming around her head like a witch.

  ‘The Surgical Registrar was kind enough to tell me.’

  ‘Oh—haven’t you had your supper either?’

  His fine mouth twitched at its corners. ‘Er—no.’ He lifted a finger and Ned came over, his cheerful, round face beaming.

  ‘’Ullo, Staff—’ad a bad day? and I bet they didn’t give yer time to eat. What’s it ter be? A nice bacon sandwich or a nice bit o’ cheese on toast? And a pot of tea?’

  Britannia’s nose twitched with anticipation. ‘Oh, Ned, I’d love a bacon sandwich—and tea, please.’

  They both glanced at the professor, who said at once: ‘A generous supply of bacon sandwiches, please, and the cheese on toast sounds nice—we’ll have that too—and the tea, of course.’

  The tea was hot and strong, the bacon sandwiches delicious. Britannia sank her splendid teeth into one of them before asking: ‘Why are you buying me my supper, Professor? It’s very kind of you, of course, you have no idea how hungry I am—but I’m surprised. You see, I sent you all the way back to the ward this morning, didn’t I, and I haven’t apologised for it yet. I’m sorry, really I am—if you had said who you were…’ She eyed him thoughtfully. ‘I expect people mostly know who you are…’

  Her companion smiled faintly. ‘Mostly.’ He watched her with interest as she daintily wolfed her sandwich. ‘When did you last eat, Miss Smith?’

  She licked a finger. ‘Well, I should have gone to second dinner, but Sister was a little late and we had this emergency in… I had coffee on the ward, though, and some rice pudding left over from the patients’ dinner.’

  The professor looked revolted. ‘No wonder you are hungry!’ He pushed the plate towards her. ‘It is nice to see a girl with such a splendid appetite.’

  Britannia flushed faintly; she wasn’t plump, but she was a tall girl and magnificently built. Despite the flush, she gave him a clear, unselfconscious look. ‘There’s a lot of me,’ she pointed out.

  Her companion drank his tea with the air of a man who was doing his duty and helped himself to one of the fast disappearing sandwiches. ‘You are engaged to be married?’ he asked coolly.

  ‘Me? Whatever gave you that idea? No, I’m not.’

  ‘You surprise me. In love, perhaps?’

  She flicked a crumb away with the tip of her tongue. For someone who had known her for a very short time, his question struck her as inquisitive to say the least. All the same, it didn’t enter her head to tell him anything but the truth. ‘Yes,’ she said briefly, and wondered just what he would say if she told him it was himself.

  The toasted cheese had arrived. She poured more tea for them both and sampled the cheese, then paused with her fork half way to her mouth because the professor was looking so very severe. ‘It is, of course, only to be expected,’ he observed in a nasty smooth voice. ‘I suppose I am expected to say what a lucky man he is.’

  Britannia munched her cheese; love him she might, but he really was quite disagreeable. ‘You aren’t expected to say anything,’ she pointed out kindly, ‘why should you? We hardly know each other and shan’t see each other again, so I can’t see that it could possibly matter to you. Have another piece of toast before I eat it all.’

  The professor curled his lip. ‘Thank you, no.’ He sat back with his arms folded against his great chest. ‘And as to seeing each other again, the unlikelihood of that is something for which I am deeply thankful. I find you far too ready with that sharp tongue of yours.’

  Britannia choked on a piece of toast. It was mortifying that the professor should have to get out of his chair and pat her on the back while she spluttered and whooped, but on the other hand it concealed her feelings very satisfactorily. As soon as she could speak she said in a reasonable voice: ‘But it is entirely your own fault that you brought me here, you know, unless it was that you wanted to convince yourself of my—my sharp voice.’

  She got up suddenly, pulled her cloak around her, thanked him for her supper and made for the door. She was quick on her feet and through it before the professor had a chance to do anything about it—besides, he had to pay the bill. There were several short cuts to the hospital, down small dark alleys which normally she wouldn’t have chosen to walk down after dark, but she didn’t think about that. She gained the hospital and her room in record time, got ready for bed and then sat down to think. She very much doubted if she would see the professor again, and if she did it would be on the ward where their conversation, if any, would be of the patients. And he had presumably only come for that one case. The thing to do would be to erase him from her mind, something she was loath to do. One didn’t meet a man one wanted to marry every day of the week and when one did, the last thing one wanted to do was to forget him. He could have been tired of course, but more probably just a bad-tempered man, given to odd whims. She couldn’t for the life of her recall any consultants who had taken staff nurses out for tea and sandwiches at nine o’clock at night, but he looked the kind of man who was accustomed to do as he pleased without anyone attempting to stop him. She got into bed, punched up her pillows and continued to muse, this time on the probability of him being engaged; he wasn’t a young man, and surely he would have an attachment of some sort. But if he hadn’t… She lay down and closed her eyes; somehow or other she intended to meet him again and some time in the future, marry him. She slept soundly on her resolution.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE PROFESSOR came to the ward twice the next day; during the morning when Britannia was scrubbed and doing a lengthy dressing behind screens, so that all she could hear was his deep voice at the other end of the ward. And in the afternoon when he came again, she was at tea.

  Sister Mack, giving her the report before she went off duty in the evening, mentioned that he would be leaving for Edinburgh the following day and then returning to Holland. ‘A charming man,’ she observed, ‘although he never quite explained how it was he knew about those tests…’ She shot a look at Britannia as she spoke, and Britannia looked placidly back and said nothing at all.

  She went about her evening duties rather morosely. She had had no plans concer
ning the professor, except that she had hoped that if and when they met again something would happen; she had no idea what, but she was a romantic girl as well as a determined one, and without being vain she was aware that she was worth looking at. Of course, it would have been easier if she had been small and blonde and helpless; men, so her brothers frequently told her, liked their women fragile. She looked down at her own splendid person and wished she could be something like Alice and become miraculously fairylike. And David Ross hadn’t helped; he had grumbled about his spoilt evening without once showing any sympathy for her own disappointment. They had met as she was on her way to dinner and he had spoken quite sharply, just as though she had done it deliberately, and when she had pointed out reasonably enough that if he wanted to grumble at someone it should have been Mr Hyde, he had shrugged his shoulders and bade her a cool goodbye.

  She had had no deep feelings about David, but before the professor had loomed so largely over her world, she had begun to think that given time she might have got around to the idea of marrying him later on. But she was sure that she would never want to do that—indeed, she didn’t want to marry anyone else but Professor Luitingh van Thien. She stopped writing the Kardex for a moment and wrote Britannia Luitingh van Thien on the blotting paper; it looked, to say the least, very imposing.

  She went home for her days off at the end of the week; she managed to travel down to Dorset at least once a month and although the month wasn’t quite up, she felt the urge to talk to her parents. Accordingly she telephoned her mother, packed an overnight bag and caught the evening train, sleeping peacefully until the train came to a brief halt at Moreton station, a small, isolated place, some way from the village of that name and several miles from Dorchester and Wareham. It was cold and dark and Britannia was the only passenger to alight on to the ill-lit platform, but her father was there, passing the time of day with Mr Tims, porter, stationmaster and ticket collector rolled into one. They both greeted her with pleasure and after an animated discussion about Mrs Tims’ nasty back and Mr Tims’ bunions, they parted, Mr Tims to return to his stuffy little cubbyhole and await the next train and Britannia and Mr Smith to the car outside; an elderly Morris Oxford decidedly vintage and Mr Smith’s pride and joy. They accomplished the short journey home without haste, because the country road was winding and very dark and the Oxford couldn’t be expected to hurry anyway, and their conversation was casual and undemanding. But once through the front door of the small Georgian cottage which was Britannia’s home, they were pounced upon by her mother, a tall older replica of herself who rattled off a succession of questions without waiting for any of them to be answered. Britannia, quite used to this, kissed her parent with deep affection, told her that she looked smashing and remarked on the delicious aroma coming from the kitchen.