by Betty Neels
She had walked rather further than she had intended; she got back to the house only just in time to get ready for dinner, and her aunt, meeting her in the hall as she went in, her mousy hair hanging untidily down to her waist, her cardigan slung anyhow round her shoulders, asked her with some asperity where she had been, and would have doubtless delivered a short, not unkind lecture on her appearance, if Hilary hadn’t come running downstairs, looking like a fairytale princess, to rescue her with a few careless, charming words. Arabella gave her a grateful glance. Hilary was a dear, it was mean to feel annoyed, however faintly at having been coerced into taking her cousin’s place on the children’s outing; it was, after all, a small return for the kindness she had received from her cousin since she had gone, as a small, unhappy girl, to live with Hilary’s parents.
She was still of the same mind the following morning as she drove the Triumph back to London with Hilary beside her, and although she was disappointed when her cousin declared herself too bored with the whole matter to give her any more information about the trip she was to take, she agreed readily enough to wait until Sister Brewster had been informed of the change. ‘She’ll send for you,’ laughed Hilary, ‘and fuss and fret about a hundred and one things, but you don’t need to take any notice, love—I can’t think what Lady Marchant was about, suggesting that old Brewster should be in charge.’
‘How many children?’ asked Arabella.
Hilary shrugged. ‘Do you know, I can’t remember—not many, though, most of them…’ she stopped abruptly and made some remark about the traffic, so that the sentence never got finished.
Wickham’s looked as grey and forbidding as it always did, even on a lovely autumn day, its brick walls and rows of windows looked uninviting, and now, today, under a pale sky with a threat of rain, and a wind blowing the first of the leaves from the row of plane trees across the London square, it looked more inhospitable than ever. But Arabella didn’t notice, and if she had, she wouldn’t have minded; she was happy at Wickham’s—in a year’s time, when she had finished her training, she would probably take a job in some other hospital, but that was a long while yet. She parked the car in the corrugated iron shed set apart for the nursing staff and walked with her cousin to the side entrance which would take them to the Nurses’ Home. She had barely half an hour before she was due on duty; she bade Hilary a swift goodbye and raced along the complexity of passages which would get her to the Home.
On the third floor, where she had her room, there was a good deal of laughing and talking. Second dinner was just over, the young ladies who had eaten it were making themselves a cup of tea. They crowded into her room, obligingly filling a mug of the comforting liquid for her, and carrying on a ceaseless chatter while she cast off her green jersey dress and tore into her blue and white striped uniform. Between heartening mouthfuls of scalding tea, she answered her companions’ questions as to her days off, exclaimed suitably over the latest hospital gossip, and agreed to go with a number of her friends to the cinema on her next free evening. It wasn’t until they were crowding through the door that she told them she was going to take her cousin’s place on the children’s bus trip.
The dozen or so nurses milling around her paused in their headlong flight back to their work on the wards. ‘Arabella, you can’t!’ exclaimed Anne Morgan, one of her particular friends. ‘Old Brewster’s in charge and there are to be twenty-two kids and they’re almost all more or less helpless—it’ll be terrible!’
‘Why can’t your cousin go?’ a voice wanted to know.
Arabella got out of answering that one by exclaiming, ‘Lord, look at the time!’ and belting down the stairs. Going on duty at two o’clock after days off was bad enough, it would be ten times worse if one were late and incurred the displeasure of the Ward Sister.
She slid into Women’s Medical with thirty seconds to spare, and when Sister came through the door a minute later, Arabella was making up an empty bed for all the world as though she had been at it for five minutes or more.
She had no time to herself after that, and when she went off duty that evening, her impending journey was quite overlooked in the scattered conversations carried on between baths and cups of tea and the trying on, by at least six of her closest friends, of a hat which had been delivered to Anne that evening. She was to be bridesmaid to her sister within a short time, and the hat was a romantic wide-brimmed affair, all ribbons and lace. It suited Anne very well—it suited them all, it was that kind of a hat, but when it was offered to Arabella she laughingly refused; her aunt had advised her that the maxim ‘A plain hat for a plain face,’ was a good one, and Arabella had faithfully abided by it. All the same, when she came back from her bath some twenty minutes later and found everyone gone and the hat on Anne’s bed, she settled the masterpiece of millinery upon her head and looked rather fearfully in the mirror.
Aunt Maud had been wrong; the hat did something for her, she looked almost pretty. She winced at the memory of the severe felt she had purchased for church-going last winter, with her aunt’s unqualified approval. The next hat she bought, she vowed, turning her head this way and that before the mirror, she would buy by herself, and it would be a hat to shock the family, the village churchgoers and the parson himself. She took it off with regret. It was a pity that as a general rule she didn’t wear hats; all the same she glowed gently with the knowledge that she wasn’t quite as plain as she had imagined. It would be nice, she thought sleepily, if you were wearing such a hat when Nanny’s Mr Right came along, if ever he came, which seemed unlikely.
Two days later Sister Brewster sent for her, to inform her in tones of disapproval that since her cousin was unable to go on the children’s holiday which Lady Marchant had so kindly arranged, and Matron had signified her approval of Arabella taking her place, she would have to make do with whoever was offered her. Upon this rather unfortunate opening she proceeded to build her plans for the expedition, merely pausing from time to time in order to tell Arabella that she was to do as she was told at all times. ‘I shall have my hands full,’ stated Sister Brewster loftily, ‘and I want no nonsense of any sort.’
Arabella wondered if the programme—and a very muddled one it was too—was to be adhered to, what time there would be left for her to do more than draw breath, let alone give way to any sort of nonsense. She assured the older lady that she wasn’t the nonsensical type, and then enquired how many children they were to escort.
‘Twenty-two,’ said Sister Brewster snappily.
‘Are they all able to help themselves?’
‘Some ten or eleven are capable of doing most things. You will need to help the others.’
Arabella caught her breath, clamped her teeth firmly on to her tongue and remained commendably silent. It was going to be far worse than she had been led to believe; no wonder Hilary hadn’t wanted to go, although she might not have known the details when she cried off. Arabella, who wouldn’t have played a dirty trick on anyone, couldn’t imagine others doing so, especially her own cousin.
She went along to the Sisters’ Wing of the Home that evening and told Hilary about it, and her cousin, sitting before her mirror, doing things to her pretty face, made a sympathetic sound. ‘Poor old Bella, I am sorry, love. Never mind, it won’t be for long and once you get to the camp I’m sure you’ll find swarms of volunteer helpers, then you won’t have nearly so much to do.’
She applied mascara with an expert hand and Arabella watched with an appreciative eye. ‘We’re leaving in two days’ time,’ she told her cousin. ‘Did you do anything about Watts’ holiday?’
Hilary got up and put on her coat. ‘Watts? Don’t worry your head, Bella—everything will be arranged.’
Arabella prepared to leave. ‘Where are you going?’ she enquired.
Hilary gave her a mischievous smile. ‘Just a little dinner for two. I’m late—be a darling and tidy up a bit for me, will you? I’ll be late back and I know I’ll be too tired…’bye, love.’
She was
gone in a discreet cloud of Ma Griffe and Arabella started to put away discarded clothes and tidy the dressing table. She had done it before quite a number of times, and as she opened doors and closed drawers she reflected, without envy, that her cousin was certainly the prettiest girl she had ever seen. The thought sent her to the mirror to peer at her own reflection, an action so unrewarding that she made haste to go back to her own room.
Lady Marchant, even though she was in Canada, had seen to it that her work in arranging a holiday for the spastic children should not go unsung; the children were conveyed to Wickham’s in the morning where the bus was waiting for them, together with a battery of cameramen from all the best newspapers and even someone from the BBC.
Arabella, busy arranging the children in their most comfortable positions and then strapping them in, had no time to pose for her photograph, although she was assured by her friends later that there were some excellent shots of her back view on the six o’clock news, but Hilary, who had come down into the courtyard ostensibly to help, turned her lovely face to the cameramen, who realized that she was exactly what they were looking for. They snapped her in a dozen positions and the BBC reporter managed a short interview, in which Hilary, without actually saying so, gave the impression that she was in charge of the whole excursion.
The bus left at length, half an hour after everyone else, because Sister Brewster, at the last minute, had discovered that she had left behind most of the papers she needed for the journey; it was unfortunate that she couldn’t remember where she had left them. They came to light in her room finally, but by then the newspaper men and the reporter had gone home to their lunch.
Contrary to her expectations, Arabella enjoyed the journey; the children were good even though they were wild with excitement; most of them were able to do only a very little for themselves even though they had the intelligence of a normal child. Arabella listened patiently to their slow, difficult speech, pointed out the sights as they went along, and when the bus pulled in to a layby, helped them to eat their lunches. Several of them needed to be fed, several more needed a steadying hand. It took so long that she ate her own sandwiches once the bus had started again, sitting up in front with three of the more helpless of the children. They were pathetically lightweight, so they were close to the driver and the bus door, so that they could be whisked in and out quickly and leave room for those not quite so handicapped. The driver, Arabella had quickly decided, was a dear; quite elderly and rather thickset, a good steady driver too and not easily distracted by the shouts and noise going on around him.
They were to cross by Hovercraft to Calais and spend the night near Ghent, at a convent known to Lady Marchant, and despite Sister Brewster’s misgivings, the journey went smoothly and surprisingly rapidly. Once on the other side of the channel, Mr Burns, the driver, took the coast road to Dunkirk, turning off there to cross into Belgium and so eventually to Ghent. The convent was just outside the town, a charming red brick building enclosed by a large garden and with a gratifyingly large number of helpers waiting to receive them. The children were fed and put to bed and the three of them were sitting down to their own supper in a commendably short space of time. They talked little, for they were tired, and Arabella for one was glad to stretch herself out in her severe little bed in the room allotted to her leading from the children’s dormitory.
They were on their way directly after a breakfast eaten at an hour which had meant getting up very early indeed, but the morning was fine if chilly and spirits were high as Mr Burns turned the bus towards Holland. They had a journey of roughly a hundred and fifty miles to go and more than five hours in which to do it, for they were expected at the camp by one o’clock. Part of the journey at least would be on the motorway, the remainder as far as Arnhem on a first-class road. The holiday camp was nine or ten miles further on, in the Veluwe, and with no towns of any size nearby, that much Arabella had learned from her study of the map before they had left, and as they went along, Mr Burns supplied odds and ends of information concerning the country around them.
They were through Arnhem and off the main road now, tooling along through pleasant quiet country, wooded and sparsely inhabited—a little like the New Forest, decided Arabella, on her way round the bus with sweets for the children. It was as she was making her way to the front again that she noticed that Mr Burns’ driving had become rather erratic; he wasn’t on the right side of the road any more, but well in the middle. The bus shot back to the right far too sharply and then, as though propelled by some giant hand, to the left. Arabella was beside a strangely sagging Mr Burns by now, applying the hand-brake, switching off the ignition and then leaning across his inert body to drag at the wheel. The bus came to a lop-sided halt on the wrong side of the road, on a narrow grass slope leading to a small waterway. It took a few long seconds to decide what it would do next and then tilted sideways and slid slowly over. Arabella had ample time to see a car, coming fast and apparently straight at them. Her head was full of a jumble of thoughts, tilting themselves sideways out of her mind just as the bus was tilting—Sister Brewster, squeaking like a parrot; the children, gasping and crying incoherently for help; Hilary, telling her it would be quite an easy trip and she had nothing to worry about; last and most strangely, a vivid memory of Anne’s gorgeous bridesmaid’s hat.
The bus landed on its side quite gently and lay rocking. She heard the squeal of brakes as she tried to twist round to hold the children nearest to her upright.
CHAPTER TWO
THERE was someone trying to open the driver’s door, now crazily above Arabella’s head. She could hear a man’s voice, uttering harsh foreign words as the door handle came away uselessly in his hand and fell within inches of her head. The next moment she saw a large hand slide through the partly opened glass top of the door and work its way to the inside handle; when the door opened with a protesting groan, the hand’s owner put his head through and stared down at her.
He was a good-looking man, not so very young, with fair hair and blue eyes under thick arched brows. Arabella examined his face with a dreamlike detachment brought on through shock, but when he allowed his gaze to roam rapidly round the chaos around her, she pulled herself together.
‘Please help us,’ she was glad to hear her voice was steady. ‘These children are spastics.’ Even as she spoke she wondered if he understood a word she said.
Apparently he did, for he disappeared without a word, leaving her a prey to the fear that he might have decided that it would be more prudent to get help rather than start rescue operations on his own. Her fears were groundless, however; she heard the door at the back of the bus being wrenched open with some difficulty and his voice, speaking English this time, telling Sister Brewster with firm authority to climb out into the road and stop any car which might come along. She couldn’t hear Sister Brewster’s reply, but the squawking had stopped.
The bus had stopped rocking by now, but there was water slopping through the half-open windows at the back. Arabella made shift to unbuckle two or three of the children who were getting wet, and lift them on to the other side of the bus, to sit them higgledy-piggledy on top of the children already there. She heard the man’s voice again and saw that he was back, leaning precariously through the door. He spoke with approval:
‘Good girl—move as many as you can from that side, but keep away from the back, the bus may slide even more. We’ll get the children out in a minute or two, but first I must move the driver.’
Arabella cried: ‘He’s…’ and stopped herself just in time because the children had stopped their wailing and crying to listen. ‘Isn’t he?’ she asked.
‘Yes. Tell me the names of any of the children who can help themselves enough to get out of the back of the bus.’
‘John, Teddy, Peter…’ she paused. ‘Sister Brewster’s there,’ she reminded him.
‘No use at the moment—go on.’
‘I can’t remember any more names, but they can help William and Joan once the
y’re out. They’re not too good on their feet, but they could manage.’
She could hear him telling them what to do; he had a deep, rather slow voice, it was very reassuring just listening to it; she felt her heartbeats slow as her first fright subsided. It was just a question of getting the children out. She contrived to turn once more and take a more detailed look at her small companions. Some of them had minor cuts and red patches which would be nasty bruises later on and they would all be badly shocked; she thought briefly and with regret of poor Mr Burns and then lifted her head again as their rescuer spoke.
‘You’ll have to help, I’m afraid. Untwist his feet from the pedals, will you?’
He made the request in a matter-of-fact way which made it easier for her to do as he had bidden her. Poor Mr Burns disappeared from view and the way was more or less clear for the children.
‘I’m afraid you must heave them from below,’ said the man, ‘but there’s bound to be a car along soon and then we’ll have help—it’s a quiet road, but not as quiet as all that.’ He peered down. ‘Strapped to their seats, are they? Let’s start with the little one beside you and then you’ll have more room to turn round.’
It was a slow business, for the children were unable to help themselves, but Arabella, although small, was sturdy and possessed the gift of patience. She had just pushed ten-year-old Bobby Trent’s frail body below the door so that the man could lean down and catch him by the arms, when she heard a car pull up. Without loosening his hold on the little boy, the man turned his head and shouted something, and Arabella heard an answering voice before the car started up again, its urgent roar fading quickly into the distance.