The Magic of Living

by Betty Neels

  He buttered more toast. ‘I want to go to the garage in the village before we leave. I could do that while you pack,’ he suggested.

  He left the house half an hour later and drove off down the road to the village. Only he didn’t go anywhere near the garage; he drove to the Rectory, where he enquired if he might see Mr Bertie Palmer.

  Bertie was finishing his breakfast and wasn’t best pleased to have a caller at such an awkward hour, but he was curious to see this Dutch doctor his mother—a close friend of Mrs Birch—had been so full of. He swallowed the rest of his coffee and strolled along to the sitting room, wondering what might be the object of such a visit.

  His caller was standing by the French window, looking out on to the garden and blocking a good deal of the light from the room in consequence. It annoyed Bertie to discover that he was forced to look up quite a long way into his visitor’s face, but all the same he said graciously:

  ‘Good morning, Doctor—er—van der Vorst.’ He offered a limp hand as he spoke and had it so ruthlessly crushed in the doctor’s large, firm grasp that he all but cried out.

  ‘Good day to you, Mr Palmer,’ answered the doctor with deliberation, eyeing his host with a disconcertingly steady gaze, while a peculiar expression passed over his calm features. It could have been tearing rage, followed swiftly by amusement and relief—it was hard to tell, and Bertie wasn’t a discerning young man. He asked a little stiffly:

  ‘You wished to see me?’

  ‘Oh, indeed I do,’ replied the doctor, and now amusement plainly had the upper hand. ‘I have come to ask you a question which I hope very much you will not resent, coming as it does from a complete stranger.’

  Bertie assumed what he hoped was a worldly air and tried not to look uneasy. ‘What’s that?’ he demanded.

  The doctor’s voice was very even. ‘Miss Arabella Birch—are you engaged to be married to her?’

  Whatever question Bertie had expected, this certainly wasn’t the one. He looked open-mouthed with astonishment at his visitor and said weakly:

  ‘I say, wherever did you get that from?’ His look changed to apprehension. ‘Bella? I wouldn’t have her for a million pounds!’ He caught the doctor’s eye and something in it made him say hastily: ‘What I mean to say is, we’ve known each other since we were kids, but that doesn’t mean to say… Why, she’s always telling me off, I can tell you—not my type at all, though the parents are always pushing us to be friends.’ His voice rose. ‘Why, she likes birds and small children and long walks in the rain—I pity the man who…’

  ‘Save your pity,’ counselled the doctor in a dangerously soft voice. ‘And thank you for your most enlightening answer. I’ll bid you good morning.’

  Bertie ushered him out, trying to keep up with his enormous strides while he began and never finished a string of incoherent remarks, hardly noticing the pain as the doctor crushed his metacarpal bones once more and bade him a courteous goodbye. He stood on the step, watching the Bentley with envy, and then wandered back into the house, brooding over the peculiar ways of foreigners and nursing his aching hand.

  Gideon drove slowly and in deep thought back to Little Dean House, where he walked silently through the hall and up the stairs, to knock on Nanny Bliss’s door. When he heard Arabella’s voice inviting him to go in, he did so, barely glancing at her as he went to the bed. Nanny was awake, refreshed after a nap and a glass of warm milk which Arabella had just removed. Her visitor said composedly: ‘You’re feeling better, aren’t you? Do you suppose you feel well enough to continue our little talk for a few minutes?’

  Nanny examined his face. ‘Private like?’

  He nodded and then turned to Arabella, standing by the door with the milk. ‘You don’t mind, Arabella? I want a few words with Miss Bliss before I go.’

  She didn’t quite look at him. ‘No, of course I don’t mind, but Doctor West will be here in a few minutes.’

  ‘Splendid.’ He opened the door for her and when she gave him a questioning look, told her blandly: ‘Miss Bliss and I share the same interests. I promise you I won’t tire her.’ And as she went past him: ‘Arabella, I should like to talk to you before I go.’ He had put a hand on her arm, but she moved away and he took it away immediately.

  ‘I don’t think there will be time,’ said Arabella, suppressing a strong urge to burst into tears. ‘I’d rather not, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘I do mind, but I won’t press you. What I have to say to you cannot be said in a couple of minutes. But at least let me apologise.’

  The railway ticket, of course, and calling her names because she didn’t want to see Nanny. ‘It’s quite all right, thank you,’ she said, very polite and not stammering at all. ‘It was a perfectly natural mistake.’ She put out a hand for him to take. ‘Perhaps you had better have your little chat with Nanny, or Doctor West will be here.’

  She went to her room and stayed there until she heard Doctor West’s booming voice enquiring for her. He was in Nanny’s room, and so, to her surprise, was Gideon. The two men stared at her as she went in, and she frowned a little, aware that she was hardly looking her best. Doctor West greeted her with a bluff: ‘There you are, Arabella. Everyone else is in the sitting room drinking sherry—why aren’t you? You look as though you could do with it. What have you been doing to Nanny, eh? She’s taken a decided turn for the better since I saw her yesterday—another couple of days should see her out of the wood. You will be here for that time, I gather? I’ll get the district nurse to come over twice a day when you go, so that Nanny is well looked after.’

  Arabella had gone to stand by the bed. ‘Nanny can stay here? There’ll be no need to send her to hospital?’

  ‘No, nor anywhere else; set your mind at rest about that, Arabella. Go on with the antibiotics, will you, increase the diet—lots of fluids—and see that she swings her legs out of bed at least twice a day.’

  He patted her on the shoulder in fatherly fashion and made for the door, saying as he went: ‘Shall we have that little talk as we go down to the car?’ And Gideon, who had uttered no word, followed him out.

  ‘What have they got to talk about?’ Arabella wanted to know, not really interested, but it was something to say, and if she didn’t say something she would think about Gideon; that he had gone without saying goodbye and she had no idea if or when she would see him again.

  ‘Men,’ observed Nanny from her bed, ‘they don’t go about things like a woman would.’ Which didn’t answer the question at all. But Arabella was drawing up the next dose of Ledermycin and wasn’t really listening.

  Gideon made no attempt to see her before he went. She didn’t see Hilary either, but she heard their goodbyes being said in the hall below, and went across the landing to watch them go. Hilary had on the new winter coat with its hood framing her lovely face. She looked pleased with herself, and so, Arabella saw to her sorrow, did Gideon.

  She stayed for the remainder of her days off and had the satisfaction of seeing Nanny’s steady improvement. Of her aunt and uncle she saw very little; at meal times, naturally enough, and for an hour in the evening, but beyond a kindly and rather vague interest in Nanny’s health and their expressions of relief that Arabella was there to look after her, they took very little interest, her aunt’s attention, at least, being settled for the moment upon Hilary and her gratifying conquest of the wealthy and more than presentable Gideon, although as her aunt remarked one evening as they sat together after supper: ‘I do wonder if we are perhaps a little premature in supposing dear Hilary is to marry Gideon. Perhaps I am unobservant, but I can’t say that I have noticed anything in his manner towards her which suggests it. He drives her up and down to Wickham’s, of that I’m aware, but only when she’s asked him to do so. Possibly he’s of a different nature from other men-friends she’s had; they seemed to me to be always under foot.’

  Arabella didn’t look up from her knitting. ‘The doctor’s a busy man and he doesn’t live in England,’ she volunteered in a co
lourless voice, ‘and he’s n-not so very young.’

  ‘But so handsome,’ murmured her aunt, ‘and all that money—not that he’s ever actually mentioned…but that car and his clothes, and Hilary asked one of the registrars at Wickham’s…’ She frowned. ‘I hope Hilary will persuade him to come again soon—I did invite him, you know, but he seemed a little uncertain.’ She laughed. ‘Indeed, almost reluctant, but that is, of course, quite absurd.’

  Arabella went back to hospital the following day, with Nanny transferred to the kindly district nurse, who promised faithfully to let her know if Nanny should take a turn for the worse or didn’t progress as she ought. And Arabella had begged a few minutes of Doctor West’s time too, and outlined to him her plans about having Nanny to live with her. He had been very kind.

  ‘Don’t worry that little head of yours,’ he reassured her. ‘Nanny is in good hands, I promise you she won’t be going to any homes for the aged, so don’t rush into things. When do you take your Finals?’

  ‘In about nine months’ time.’

  ‘And what do you intend doing?’

  She looked at him forlornly. ‘I d-don’t know, Doctor West.’

  ‘What—no hidden ambition to set the nursing world on fire?’

  She shook her head. ‘No,’ she said seriously, ‘but I daresay I’ll think of something—or something might happen,’ she finished vaguely.

  ‘Indeed it might,’ he let out a cheerful bellow of laughter. ‘In the meantime don’t worry about Nanny.’

  She got to Wickham’s in the evening, too late for supper, which was a good excuse for a general whip-round for the purchase of fish and chips from the shop on the corner, while Arabella, not having been on duty like her hard-working colleagues, made the tea and collected mugs. Gossip was mostly shop; it nearly always was to start with. Only when the various operations, diagnoses, admissions and unfair treatment meted out on the part of various Ward Sisters had been discussed and sifted down to their very foundations did the talk turn to lighter subjects.

  What did Arabella think of her cousin’s conquest of the Dutch doctor? someone wanted to know, but before she needed to answer Anne spoke up:

  ‘You know, everyone’s talking about a conquest, but he doesn’t look a bit smitten to me; just good-natured—I mean, what’s so extraordinary about giving a girl a lift these days, especially when she asks for one? If he’s in love with her, I’ll eat my hat!’

  There was an instant chorus of protest. ‘Not the bridesmaid’s hat—it’s far too gorgeous. Eat that awful thing you bought in Oxford Street and hated when you got it back here.’ And someone chimed in: ‘Arabella, talking of clothes, you’ve branched out, haven’t you? That pinafore dress and that gay mac—don’t tell me it’s the…’

  Arabella interrupted hastily: ‘Oh, I’ve got my eye on that bearded type in the Path Lab.’

  There was a scream of laughter as the party broke up to wash greasy fingers, wind hair into rollers and get to the bathrooms first, leaving Arabella and Anne together.

  ‘Has he gone, Arabella? I mean, not to come back again?’

  Arabella nodded. ‘As far as I know—he didn’t tell me; he didn’t say goodbye,’ she swallowed the tears in her throat. ‘He’s not in love with Hilary, I think—dazzled, perhaps—who wouldn’t be? I don’t know any more, he’s never given a hint…but she’ll get him, you s-see if s-she d-doesn’t.’ She sniffed, ‘I’ll tell you what happened the other evening.’

  When she had finished Anne got off the bed and strolled to the dressing table to pick up her hair brush. ‘That was a rotten trick—do you suppose he saw through it when he picked up the ticket?’

  ‘Perhaps, but what good would that do? He th-thinks I’m going to m-marry Bertie.’

  Her friend gave a snort of laughter. ‘If only he’d met him, he’d change his mind about that!’ She wandered round the little room, brushing her hair. ‘Arabella, don’t give up—oh, I know you’d never make a play for him, you’re not like that. I don’t suppose you know how—but don’t give up.’

  Arabella started for the door. ‘I know that’s good advice, but I don’t think it’s much use,’ she declared, ‘but thanks for listening, all the same, Anne. Is Doreen back?’

  Anne nodded. ‘And gone again—wangled another week’s holiday—got herself engaged to some Scottish engineer. She sent her love and said be good.’

  ‘I never have the chance to be anything else,’ muttered Arabella bitterly, ‘but it’s nice for her.’ She wandered off with a soft good night because the lights were out by now and the Home was quiet. She went to her room and got into bed; it was almost morning before she finally went to sleep.

  Men’s Surgical was full, because it was take-in week and there seemed to have been a burst of accidents in the neighbourhood. The fact that for once she was forced to do her share of the work had put Staff Nurse Smithers into a bad frame of mind. She pounced upon Arabella as soon as she appeared on the ward the next morning, gave her an impossible amount of work to do and then shadowed her for the entire morning to make sure that it was done.

  ‘Look,’ said Arabella, thoroughly fed up, ‘if you got on with some of the dressings yourself instead of wasting time breathing down my neck, we might get finished.’

  Smithers glared at her. ‘I’ll report you for rudeness!’ she began.

  ‘Oh, pooh to you,’ said Arabella; she had discovered that being in love with Gideon and knowing that it was hopeless had given her a don’t-care attitude to life, which in the case of the wretched Smithers, had a highly salutary result. She was left in peace to get on with her work for the rest of the day, and indeed, during the days which followed she was allowed to get through her work with the minimum of interference.

  She went home on her next days off and found Nanny much better; sitting in her chair by the nursery fire once more. They had tea together and Nanny, rather surprisingly, wanted to know how Hilary was getting on.

  ‘I’ve only seen her twice,’ admitted Arabella. ‘She’s a bit put out—I think because Doctor van der Vorst went back to Holland without s-saying anything.’

  ‘I daresay she was,’ commented Nanny dryly. ‘She’ll have found other company, no doubt.’

  ‘Well, yes—there’s a new Registrar on the Medical side—I expect she’s lonely.’

  Nanny snorted. ‘And you, are you lonely, Miss Arabella?’

  Arabella was on her knees, mending the fire. ‘Oh, Nanny, yes!’

  CHAPTER NINE

  SHE went back to Wickham’s the next afternoon, ready for duty in the morning, and was in her room with several friends and acquaintances sharing the inevitable pot of tea after supper, when there was a knock on the door. There was a chorus of ‘Come ins’ and Larissa’s rather startled face peered in at the crowd of nurses in a variety of dress and undress. Arabella jumped up and flung the door wide.

  ‘Larissa—how l-lovely! Do come in. It’s a b-bit crowded, but there’s plenty of t-tea in the p-pot.’

  Larissa was given a chair and offered tea and introduced to the room in general. ‘Just say “Hi”,’ Arabella advised her. ‘You’ll never remember all their names.’

  Larissa looked round her. ‘These are all your friends?’ she wanted to know.

  Arabella nodded. ‘Well, yes—you see, we all started our training together, and we stay in a bunch until we take our Finals—it’s nice really because there’s always someone to go out with or to share study.’ She sat down on the floor beside the Dutch girl. ‘Are you staying in London?’

  ‘Just for a few days—I wish to buy clothes before our wedding and I do so like your Marks and Spencers, also I wish to see Billy and Sally—you have seen them?’

  ‘Several times; they come here for treatment, you see, and I slip down and say hullo—they’re doing awfully well. They’ll be so glad to see you.’

  ‘Yes? I am glad. George misses you.’

  Arabella felt a wave of nostalgia sweep over for the old house in Doesburg. ‘And Tatters an
d Crosby and the kittens?’ her voice was too bright. ‘And Emma, of course, and Hanneke…’

  ‘They all flourish. Arabella, I came to see if you would come and have dinner with me at my hotel.’ Larissa looked at her a little uncertainly and then at the over-full room.

  ‘I’d love to.’ Perhaps Larissa would talk about Gideon. ‘I’ve had supper once,’ she went on with engaging frankness, ‘but it was beans on toast and I can easily forget it.’ She hesitated. ‘Are you alone—there isn’t anyone…?’

  ‘I am alone this evening—Gideon is over here too, but he has his own business to attend to—other fish to fry, do you not say? I am quite sure that we shall not see him this evening.’

  Arabella nodded; she had remembered that Hilary had told her, days ago, that she would be going out on this particular evening—it wasn’t hard now to guess with whom it would be. She sprang to her feet, crying:

  ‘I’m going out with Larissa, everyone. F-finish the tea if you w-want to.’

  She carved her way through her friends to the wardrobe and pulled out the tweed coat, caught up her gloves and handbag, and pausing only briefly before the mirror, declared herself to be ready. It was fortunate that she had worn the jersey dress that evening and had done her face and hair before she had gone down to supper. She waited at the door while Larissa, Dutch custom dying hard, shook hands with simply everyone in the room, and then accompanied her guest to the hospital entrance.

  ‘There’s a bus at the end of the road,’ volunteered Arabella. ‘Where do you want to go?’

  But Larissa had already waved to a waiting taxi. ‘I told him to wait,’ she explained as they got in, and Arabella asked where they were going.

  ‘Duke’s Hotel, in St James Place—it is quiet there.’

  Arabella had walked past it on a number of occasions—quiet indeed, and expensive too, she thought, but Larissa wouldn’t have to worry about that. ‘How long are you here?’ she asked.