Only by Chance

by Betty Neels

  The owner of the voice was listening patiently, his eyes on the back of Henrietta’s mousy bun of hair, recognising her at once—which upon reflection surprised him, for he hadn’t seen her clearly. Perhaps it was her voice, quiet and cheerful, urging the old ladies to enjoy their tea.

  Mrs Carter paused for breath and he said, ‘Yes, indeed, Mrs Carter,’ which encouraged her to start again as he allowed his thoughts to wander. Not that he allowed that to show. His handsome face was wearing the bland listening expression he so often hid behind when he was with someone he disliked, and he disliked Mrs Carter. She was efficient, ran her department on oiled wheels, but he had upon occasion seen how she treated her staff... He became aware of what Mrs Carter was saying.

  ‘I need more trained staff, sir. I’m fobbed off with anyone who chooses to apply for a job here. That girl there, sitting between those two patients—she does her best but she’s not carrying her weight, and when she’s reproved she answers back. No manners, but what can you expect these days? She’ll have to go, of course.’

  She had made no effort to lower her rather loud voice and the man beside her frowned. It was obvious that the girl had heard every word; probably she had been meant to.

  He said clearly, ‘It appears to me that she is coping admirably, Mrs Carter. One does not need to be highly skilled to be patient and kind, and the young lady you mention appears to possess both these virtues...’

  Mrs Carter bridled. ‘Well, I’m sure you are right, sir.’ She would have liked to argue about it, but although she would never admit it, even to herself, she was a little in awe of him.

  He was a senior consultant—she had heard him described as a medical genius—who specialised in brain surgery. He was a giant of a man with more than his share of good looks and, it was said, the world’s goods. Not that anyone knew for certain; he rarely spoke about himself to his colleagues, and if they knew about his private life they never spoke of it.

  He said now, ‘I should like to take a look at Mrs Collins. Is she making any progress? There was a certain lack of co-ordination after I operated, but there should be some improvement.’

  Henrietta heard Mrs Carter answer as they walked away, but she still didn’t turn round. She knew who he was now; at least, she knew that he was someone important in the hospital. He had put Mrs Carter neatly in her place, and Henrietta was grateful for his kindness, but she hoped that she would never meet him face-to-face—she would die of shame...

  As usual she was the last to leave. She locked up and hurried across to the porter’s office to hand over the keys. It was another dark and wet evening, and she couldn’t wait to get home and have a cup of tea. Mrs Carter’s remarks had worried her; she didn’t think that she would be sacked unless she had done something truly awful, and although Mrs Carter was always finding fault she had never threatened her with dismissal.

  She bade the porter goodnight and made her way to the side-door, ducking her head at the sudden gust of wind and rain until brought to a sudden halt by something solid. An arm steadied her.

  ‘Ah, I was afraid that I might have missed you. I feel that I owe you an apology on Mrs Carter’s behalf. But let us be more comfortable in the car while I give it.’

  ‘I’m going home,’ said Henrietta, ‘and there is really no need...’

  She could have saved her breath. The arm, solid as a rock but gentle, was urging her across the forecourt to the sacred corner where the consultants parked their cars. Her companion opened the door of one of them—a Bentley—popped her inside, got in his side and turned to her. ‘That’s better. What is your name?’

  Was he going to give her the sack? she thought wildly. She had been told that the consultants had a good deal of influence. She sat up straight, her nose twitching at the faint whiff of good leather upholstery. ‘Henrietta Cowper.’

  He offered a large hand. ‘Ross-Pitt.’

  She shook it. ‘How do you do, Mr Ross-Pitt?’

  She gave him an enquiring look and he said at once, ‘You will have heard every word Mrs Carter uttered this afternoon. I can assure you that there have been no complaints about your work. Mrs Carter is an excellent organiser, and knows her job inside out, but she can be rather hard on people. I’m sure she didn’t mean all she said!’

  Henrietta, who knew better, didn’t contradict him and he went on, ‘You like your work?’ His voice was friendly but detached.

  ‘Yes, thank you.’

  ‘You’re not full-time?’

  ‘No, no, three days a week.’ She paused. ‘It is kind of you to explain, Mr Ross-Pitt. I’m grateful.’ She put a hand on the door. ‘Goodbye.’

  ‘I’ll drive you home. Stay where you are; it’s pelting down—you’ll drown.’

  ‘I live very near here...’

  The engine was purring almost silently. ‘Where?’

  ‘Well, Denvers Street; it’s a turning off the main road on the left-hand side, but there’s no need...’

  He took no notice of that, but drove out of the forecourt into the busy main road. ‘The third turning on the left,’ said Henrietta, and then added, ‘It’s number thirty, halfway down on the right.’

  When he stopped she started to scramble out, only to be restrained by his hand. ‘Wait.’ He had a very quiet voice. ‘Have you a key?’

  ‘The door isn’t locked; it’s flatlets and bedsitters.’

  He got out and opened her door, and waited while she got out. ‘Thank you very much.’ She looked up into his placid face. ‘Do get back into your car; you’ll get soaked.’ She smiled at him. ‘Goodnight, sir.’

  He gave a little nod. ‘Goodnight, Miss Henrietta Cowper.’ He waited in the rain until she had gone into the house.

  * * *

  A FUNNY LITTLE thing, he reflected as he drove away. Lovely eyes, but an ordinary face. Of course, wet hair hanging around a rain-washed face hardly helped. He liked her voice, though. He turned the car and drove back to the main road, making for the motorway which would take him to his home.

  He had a flat above his consulting rooms in Wimpole Street, but home was a rambling old house just south of Thaxted, and since the hospital was close to the M11 he chose to travel to and fro. After a day in the operating theatre or a session in Outpatients he enjoyed the drive, and the drive to the city in the early morning, even in mid-winter, was no problem—the Bentley swallowed the miles with well-bred silent speed while he considered the day’s work ahead of him.

  He joined the motorway and sat back, relaxed behind the wheel, reviewing several of his patients’ progress, weighing the pros and cons of each case and, that done, allowed his thoughts to roam.

  Miss Henrietta Cowper, he reflected, at first glance was a nonentity, but he suspected that there was more to her than that. A square peg in a round hole, perhaps? Was there an intelligent brain behind that small, plain face? He thought that there was. Mrs Carter had seen that and resented it.

  So why didn’t the girl train as a nurse, or, for that matter, go into computers or something similar? Her home had looked shabby from the outside, but the street was a quiet well-kept one, despite it being in one of the East End’s run-down areas.

  He turned the car off the motorway and drove for another ten minutes or so along a country road, until he slowed between a handful of cottages and turned again past the church, up the main street of the village and then through his own gates. The drive was short, widening out before the front of the house. He got out and stood a moment looking at it—white walls, half-timbered, with a tiled roof, charming lattice windows, glowing with lamplight, a porch and a solid wood door.

  Its Tudor origins were apparent, although since then it had been added to from time to time, but nothing had been changed during the last two hundred years. It stood overlooking the wintry garden, offering a warm welcome, and when the door was opened a Labrador dog gal
loped out to greet him.

  Mr Ross-Pitt bent to greet the eager beast. ‘Watson, old fellow—wanting a walk? Presently.’

  They went in together to be greeted by his housekeeper. Mrs Patch was elderly, stout and good-natured. She ran his home beautifully, with the help of a girl from the village and Mrs Lock, who came to do the rough work twice a week. She said comfortably, ‘There you are, sir. I’ve just this minute taken a batch of scones out of the oven—just right for your tea.’

  He put a hand on her plump shoulder. ‘Mrs Patch, you’re a treasure; I’m famished. Give me five minutes...’ He went along a short passage leading from the roomy square hall and opened the door at its end.

  His study was at the side of the house, its French doors opening onto the garden. Now its crimson velvet curtains were closed against the dark night and a fire burned briskly in the steel grate. He sat down at his desk, put his bag beside his chair and turned on the answering machine. Most of the messages were unimportant, and several were from friends—they could be dealt with later.

  He left the room and crossed the hall to the drawing room—an irregular-shaped room with windows on two sides, an inglenook and a ceiling which exhibited its original strapwork.

  The furniture was a pleasing mixture of comfortable armchairs and sofas, lamp-tables placed where they were most needed, and a bow-fronted cabinet which took up almost all of one wall. It was filled with porcelain and silver, handed down from one generation to the next. He remembered how as a small boy his grandmother had allowed him to hold some of the figurines in his hands.

  He had inherited the house from her, and had altered nothing save to have some unobtrusive modernising of the kitchen. He disliked central heating, but the house was warm; the Aga in the kitchen never went out and there were fires laid in every room, ready to be lighted.

  He went to his chair near the fire and Mrs Patch followed him in with the tea-tray.

  ‘It’s no night to be out in,’ she observed, setting the tray down on a table at his elbow, ‘nor yet to be in a miserable cold room somewhere. I pity those poor souls living in bedsitting rooms.’

  Was Henrietta Cowper living like that? he wondered.

  Each week he spent an evening at a clinic in Stepney; only the two young doctors who ran it knew who he was and he never talked about it.

  It had given him an insight into the lives of most of the patients—unemployed for the most part, in small, half-furnished rooms with not enough warmth or light.

  On occasion he had needed to go and see them in their homes and he had done what he could, financing the renting of an empty shop where volunteers offered tea and soup and loaves. No one knew about this and he never intended that they should...

  Presently he got into his coat again and took Watson for his evening walk. It was still raining and very dark, but he had known the country around his home since he’d been a small boy; he followed well-remembered lanes with Watson trotting beside him. The country, even on a night such as this, was vastly better than London streets.

  * * *

  IF, DURING the following week, Mr Ross-Pitt thought of Henrietta at all it was briefly; his days were full, his leisure largely filled too. He rode whenever he could, and was much in demand at his friends’ and acquaintances’ dinner tables, for he was liked by everyone, unfailingly good-natured and placid. Too placid, some of his women-friends thought; a delightful companion, but never showing the least desire to fall in love.

  It was on the next Monday morning that he went down to the occupational therapy unit to check on a patient’s progress since he had operated on him to remove a brain tumour. His progress was excellent, and he told Mrs Carter so.

  ‘Well, I’m sure we do our best, sir, although it’s hard going—there’s that girl, not turned up this morning. I knew she would be no good when she was taken on—’

  ‘Perhaps she is ill?’

  ‘Ill?’ Mrs Carter snorted in disgust. ‘These young women don’t know the meaning of a good day’s work, she’ll turn up on Wednesday with some excuse.’

  He answered rather absent-mindedly and presently went away, his mind already engrossed with the patient he was to see that afternoon—a difficult case which would need all his skill.

  * * *

  IT WAS ON Wednesday evening that he went along to the clinic, after being at the hospital for most of the day. It was another wet night, cold and windy with a forecast of snow, and the dark streets were gloomy. There was a light over the clinic door, dispelling some of the dreariness.

  He parked the car and went inside, past the crowd in the waiting room, to the two small rooms at the back. Both doctors were already there. He greeted them cheerfully, threw his coat onto a chair and put on his white coat.

  ‘A full house,’ he observed. ‘Is there anyone you want me to see?’

  ‘Old Mr Wilkins is back again—blood pressure up, headaches, feels giddy...’

  Mr Ross-Pitt nodded. ‘I’ll take a look.’ He went into the second room, cast his eye over Mr Wilkins’ notes and then fetched him from the waiting room. After that he worked without pause; the clinic was supposed to shut at eight o’clock, but it never did. As long as there was a patient waiting it remained open, and that evening it was busier than usual.

  It was almost nine o’clock when the younger of the two doctors put his head round the door. ‘Could you cast an eye over this girl? She’s just been brought in—came in a greengrocer’s van. Looks ill. Not our usual type of patient, though; ought to have gone to her own doctor.’

  ‘Let’s have a look...’ Mr Ross-Pitt went into the almost empty waiting room.

  His eye passed over the two elderly women who came regularly, not because they were ill but because it was warm and cheerful; they were the first to arrive and the last to leave. It passed over the young man waiting for his girlfriend, who was with the other doctor, and lighted on the small group on the bench nearest the door—a shabby young man with a kind face and an elderly woman with beady black eyes, and between them, propped up, was Henrietta, looking very much the worse for wear.

  Mr Ross-Pitt bit back the words on his tongue and went to bend over her.

  ‘Miss Cowper, can you tell me what happened?’

  She lifted her head and looked at him hazily. ‘I’m not feeling well,’ she said unhelpfully, and the woman spoke up.

  ‘Bin ill since Saturday night—got a room at my ’ouse, yer see—never see ’er on Monday and Tuesday, and then she went to work this morning same as usual and they brought ’er back. Fainted all over the place, she did.’

  He frowned. Why hadn’t they kept her at the hospital if she had been taken ill there? His thought was answered before he could utter it. ‘They couldn’t bring her back at once, see? They ’as ter get the offices cleaned before eight o’clock, and someone ’ad ter finish ’er jobs for ‘er.’

  ‘Yes, yes. How far away is this job? How was she brought home?’

  ‘On a bus, o’ course; there ain’t no money for taxis for the likes of us. Put ’er ter bed, I did; leastways, got ’er ter lie down and put a blanket over ’er. Thought she’d pick up, but she ain’t much better.

  ‘You didn’t take her to the hospital?’

  ‘Brought ’er ’ere, ’aven’t we?’

  ‘You have done quite right. I’d like to see her in the surgery, please.’

  He scooped Henrietta up, nodded to the woman to come too, and carried her to the second empty room.

  Ten minutes later he sat down at the desk to write up his notes while Henrietta was wrapped up in her elderly coat and a scarf was tied over her head.

  ‘A rather nasty influenza,’ said Mr Ross-Pitt. ‘She’ll be all right in a few days, provided she takes these tablets regularly, stays in bed and keeps warm.’

  Henrietta opened her eyes, then. ‘I’m never ill; I’ll be
all right at home.’

  ‘You’ll look after her?’ asked Mr Ross-Pitt, taking no notice of this. ‘She should have gone to her own doctor, you know.’

  ‘Couldn’t, could she? He don’t see no one on a Sunday, unless they’re at their last gasp, and on weekdays she ’as ter be at the offices by half past six.’

  ‘In the morning?’

  ‘O’ course. Them clerks and posh businessmen don’t want no cleaning ladies mopping floors round ’em, do they?’ She gave him a pitying look. ‘Don’t know much, do yer?’

  Mr Ross-Pitt took this in good part. ‘I’m learning,’ he observed placidly, and smiled so that the woman smiled too.

  ‘I dare say you’re a good doctor,’ she conceded. ‘We’ll get ’er back ‘ome.’

  ‘I have a car outside. Supposing I drive Miss Cowper back and you go ahead and get her bed ready and the room warm?’

  ‘If yer say so.’

  Henrietta opened an eye. ‘I’m quite able to manage on my own.’ She added with weary politeness, ‘Thank you.’

  He quite rightly ignored this remark too, and, since she felt too peculiar to protest, he carried her out to his car after a brief word with his two colleagues, laid her gently on the backseat and followed the greengrocer’s van through the murky night. Henrietta, her eyes tight shut against a ferocious headache, said crossly, ‘I’m perfectly all right.’

  ‘Close your eyes and be quiet,’ said Mr Ross-Pitt. ‘You aren’t going to be all right for a couple of days, but you’ll feel better once you’re snug in bed.’

  Henrietta made a half-hearted sound which sounded like ‘pooh’ and slid back into uneasy dozing. She really was too weary to bother.

  CHAPTER TWO

  MR ROSS-PITT slid to a gentle halt behind the van and got out of his car to find the van’s owner waiting for him. ‘Mrs Gregg’s gone up ter see ter the room,’ he explained. ‘Do you want an ’and?’

  ‘I think I can manage. The room is upstairs?’