The Convenient Wife

by Betty Neels

  She decided sleepily that he hadn’t known what to talk about, they had nothing in common. She forgot for the moment that they had shared delight in the wintry countryside around them, stopped to watch a squirrel foraging, a flight of rooks going home to their nests, paused for minutes to lean over a gate to watch a flock of sheep, and agreed that the country was a splendid place in which to live.

  ‘You don’t care for London and big cities?’ he had asked casually.

  ‘Well, I think perhaps the London I know isn’t the same as yours. Some of the streets around St James’s Park and that part of the world look delightful, and I suppose that if one lived there London might be very nice. But I love the country.’ She had turned to face him. ‘You can’t be lonely there,’ she had assured him earnestly.

  They had played cards after supper, the four of them, and when Lottie had declared that she wanted a cup of tea before she went to bed the two men had gone into the kitchen to make it, which had given Venetia the chance to thank Lottie for her visit, and suggest that she caught the bus to Beaconsfield after breakfast and then a train back to town. She had supposed that Lottie would have agreed at once, since Arthur wasn’t going back to St Jude’s for two days, and she had been disconcerted when Lottie had told the men as they came from the kitchen. Arthur had said at once, ‘Of course you’ll stay, Venetia,’ and the professor had put down the tray and stood looking at her.

  ‘Venetia is spending the day with me tomorrow,’ he had observed blandly.

  ‘Me?’ she had declared at once. ‘Well, it’s the first I’ve heard of it. Besides, I’ve a great many things to do. I don’t know—’

  ‘I’ll be here at half-past nine,’ the professor had continued just as though she hadn’t spoken, and he had smiled at her with such kindness that she had nodded her head in what she now considered to be a very weak fashion.

  ‘I should have said no,’ she muttered, and went instantly to sleep.

  The snow had ceased during the night, and it was a bright sunny morning with only a thin white blanket over the fields and hedges. The professor arrived at half-past nine exactly, and Venetia got into her coat, wishing that she had bought the new one she had promised herself, tied a scarf over her head once more, thrust her hands into woollen gloves, and pronounced herself ready. She spoke in her usual matter-of-fact manner, and evinced no excitement at the prospect of a day’s outing with the professor, agreeing pleasantly that it was a splendid day for a drive, and at the same time wondering if the professor had invited her for the sole reason of taking her off the Mileses’ hands. She wished suddenly that she had been firm about returning to St Jude’s.

  The professor stood watching her face, reading the expression upon it very accurately. He didn’t allow her more than a few minutes in which to say a temporary goodbye, but propelled her gently out into the car, helped her in and got in beside her. For all the aloofness of his manner, he was good at putting his patients at their ease. He applied himself to doing just that with Venetia. He embarked on a gentle flow of talk and watched her relax, and only then did he say casually, ‘I thought we might go to the sea, somewhere along the south coast. There’s a pleasant village— Findon—just inland from Worthing. We might lunch there and then go for a walk by the sea. Would you like that?’

  ‘Oh, yes. I would.’ Her lovely eyes sparkled and she went a little pink at the thought of it.

  ‘You go to the sea often?’

  ‘Well, no. I—I always spent my holidays with Granny. She liked going to art galleries and museums, and sometimes we had a day out—you know, to Windsor or Henley—she loved the Thames, and once we went to the village where she used to live.’

  She stopped. ‘I’m sorry, I must be boring you.’

  ‘No. We are an unlikely pair, are we not, Venetia? And yet we contrive to suit each other very well.’

  She thought his remark over very carefully, but even if she could have thought of a suitable reply he didn’t give her the chance, but slowed the car and stopped outside a country pub. ‘Coffee? This looks all right.’

  It was when they were in the car once again, going towards the coast, that he began to tell her something of himself.

  ‘I have a ward,’ he confided. ‘A friend of mine died several years ago, and I discovered that I was her guardian. She is at a finishing school in Switzerland, but she returns for Christmas—this is her last term. When she is eighteen she is to go to an aunt in America, but until then she will live with me.’

  ‘You’re not married?’

  ‘No. Not yet. I have never found a woman I would want to make my wife, and I suspect that I am getting too old now.’

  ‘Rubbish!’ said Venetia strongly, quite forgetting that he was a professor and entitled to respect from a mere student nurse. ‘You’re not a bit old.’

  ‘Thirty-five.’

  She hoped that he might go on talking about himself, but she was to be disappointed; he talked about everything else under the sun for the rest of the day, but never another word of a personal nature.

  They reached Findon in good time for lunch, and stopped in the square at Darling’s Bistro, a cosy, small restaurant where they ate Stilton pâté with pears, raised turkey pie, and rounded off their meal with a lemon-and-lime soufflé and all the coffee they could drink. Venetia ate with a healthy appetite, watched with an appreciative gleam by her companion, and when he suggested that they might drive on to the coast and take a walk by the sea, she agreed that they should like a happy child.

  She didn’t ask where they were going, she was content to wait and see. He drove to Brighton, where he parked the car and walked her for miles along the promenade, until her cheeks glowed and her eyes sparkled. Back in the town they had tea in the Lanes and spent half an hour looking in the shop windows there. There was a lot to see—antiques, jewellers, expensive boutiques—but dusk was already upon them as the red sun sank. The professor stowed her in the car once more and drove back along the coast road, talking of this and that until they were going through Ascot. It was dark by now, and the thin coating of snow, glistening with frost, glittered in the car’s powerful headlights.

  ‘I thought we might have dinner. There’s a nice place at Sonning, the White Hart.’

  ‘Thank you, Professor, but shouldn’t I be getting back? Won’t we be expected?’

  ‘No. I think that if we get back by ten o’clock that will be just about right. They don’t see all that much of each other, you know. I work Arthur pretty hard.’

  ‘Oh, of course. How silly of me not to think of that. But don’t you want to go home?’

  The professor smiled thinly in the dark. ‘Not before I’ve had my dinner. But perhaps you feel you’ve had enough of my company?’ His voice was silky.

  She turned to look at him through the gloom. ‘Good heavens, no, Professor, I’m having a lovely time.’ She was silent for a moment. ‘But I think I’m not the usual kind of girl you take out, am I? And you’ve been more than kind.’

  ‘I am relieved, Venetia. I was wondering if I bored you.’

  ‘Well, what a silly idea!’ she said roundly. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve bored anyone in your life. I have always thought that you were…’ she paused to find the right word ‘…detached. No, that’s not the right word—I think I mean disinterested, or do I mean indifferent? Anyway, all the nurses are scared of you, but at the same time they admire you tremendously. You see, you’re a mystery. You come and go and no one knows anything about you, whereas we all know that Mr Wells has three children and a wife who was a nurse, and Mr Farr is a grandfather, and Dr Tomkinson has just got engaged—’

  ‘I perceive that there is no privacy in the hospital.’

  ‘Well, not much,’ said Venetia matter-of-factly. ‘There’s always gossip, but it’s mostly good-natured. You know who’s going out with whom.’

  ‘You mean the nursing staff and young doctors, I presume.’

  ‘Yes—some of the nurses are awfully pretty…’

  �
��And you, Venetia? Do you go out with the young doctors?’

  ‘Me? No, of course not. I’m not pretty, and I’m not smart. Besides, I’ve always had Granny.’

  He said blandly, ‘I am greatly enlightened, I must do my utmost not to frighten the nurses. Do I frighten you, Venetia?’

  ‘Gracious, no. Well, not frighten exactly. I was just a bit in awe of you, perhaps, but not now.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear that. So we are able to dine together in a friendly fashion?’

  ‘I’d like to, thank you. Only do remember that I’m not dressed for anywhere smart.’

  The professor’s firm mouth twitched into a smile. ‘The place I have in mind will suit us both, I believe.’

  The hotel looked welcoming, and once inside Venetia went away to do her face and comb her hair. The result hardly satisfied her, but no amount of looking into the mirror was going to improve matters. She joined the professor in the bar, and drank her sherry and made polite small talk, conscious that compared with the other girls there she looked dowdy.

  She didn’t allow it to spoil her evening, though. Sitting at a table opposite the professor, she perused the menu, trying to make up her mind what to have. Everything was frightfully expensive and she frowned, looking for a reasonably priced dish. The professor, watching her with well-concealed amusement, took pity on her.

  ‘What about pheasant in red wine and chestnuts?’ he wanted to know, with just the right amount of casualness, ‘and perhaps smoked salmon and prawn salad to start with?’

  She agreed with relief, and when the food came ate it with pleasure. A refreshing change, mused the professor, urging her to have some more scalloped potatoes, remembering the young women he had dined with who had nibbled at celery sticks and only eaten things when they were out of season. The shortbread meringue gâteau, when it came, was a miracle of pastry, meringue, fresh apricots and lashings of whipped cream. Venetia had two helpings, and told him that it was just the most delicious dessert she had ever eaten. ‘Not,’ she added thoughtfully, ‘that I’ve eaten a great many! The food at St Jude’s is wholesome, but most of the time we have to eat fast, so long as it’s food it doesn’t really matter what it is, if you see what I mean.’

  The professor agreed that he saw just what she meant, and ordered coffee. He was surprised that he was enjoying himself more than he had done for a long time.

  They got back to Penn just after ten o’clock, and sat talking for half an hour before the professor got up to go. Venetia, half-way through a thank you speech, was ruthlessly cut short. ‘I must find a Christmas present for my ward,’ he told her. ‘I hope you will come with me tomorrow and help me—I have not the least idea…’

  ‘Oh, what a good idea,’ said Lottie before Venetia could speak. ‘Where will you go?’

  ‘I thought the Cotswolds; a good hunting-ground for the kind of thing she likes—small antiques, jewellery perhaps.’ He glanced at Venetia, who still hadn’t spoken. ‘Half-past nine?’ He made the question sound like a statement not to be gainsaid.

  She heard herself meekly agreeing, although she had meant to refuse.

  It was a lovely morning again. She wished that she had something different to wear as she got into her plain jersey dress and winter coat—even her shoes were sensible… She went downstairs and found the professor in the kitchen, talking to the Mileses who were washing up together.

  His ‘Good morning, Venetia,’ was brisk, and he wasted no time in trivial conversation. She found herself in the car and being driven away before she could say more than a brief goodbye to Lottie.

  She said with a touch of peevishness, ‘I’m going back to St Jude’s tomorrow.’

  ‘So am I—I’ll give you a lift. Arthur won’t need to come in until the afternoon. I’ve a list then.’

  ‘I can get a bus!’

  He took no notice of this. ‘About eleven o’clock suit you?’ he wanted to know, and he didn’t wait for her answer. ‘I think it will snow before tomorrow. It looks as though we shall have a white Christmas. There’ll be skating on the canals.’

  ‘You will go to Holland?’

  ‘Oh, yes. At the end of the week; I want to be at home when Anneta gets back.’

  Venetia was conscious of a feeling of disappointment, and dismissed it at once as absurd. After all, if she saw the professor once in a week it was unusual, and if and when they did come across each other he quite often gave her a cool stare.

  They stopped for coffee once he had circumnavigated Oxford, and then drove on to Cirencester to turn north then through Fossebridge and Bourton-on-the-Water to stop in Moreton-in-Marsh.

  ‘A happy hunting-ground for antiques,’ explained the professor, ‘and as good a place as any for lunch.’

  The hotel was in the main street, a nice old house with a comfortable dining-room and a small, cosy bar. They ate roast partridge with crunchy stuffing balls, fried bread and french beans, and followed these with a chocolate chestnut gâteau. They drank white wine, but since the professor was driving he had only one glass. They didn’t linger long over coffee, but began a brisk walk along the wide main street, stopping to look in any likely shop windows.

  ‘That’s nice,’ observed Venetia, peering into a small window crammed with antique jewellery and charming bric-a-brac. She pointed to a delicate gold necklace, studded at intervals with small pearls, and with a pearl pendant encircling a peridot from which in turn were suspended more pearls with an oval peridot at their end. It was a fragile thing, and just right for a young girl. ‘And it would look lovely with any colouring, dark or fair.’

  ‘Then we will buy it.’ She was marched into the dim interior and spent a delightful five minutes while the professor made his purchase. He joined her presently and asked carelessly, ‘Does anything take your fancy?’

  ‘Almost everything. But if you hadn’t bought the pendant I think she might have liked this, too.’ She pointed to a necklet of amethysts, interspersed with green enamel leaves set with tiny pearls.

  ‘I think the pendant is more her sort of thing, but this is charming.’

  The owner joined them, an old man who smiled at them and told them to look their fill. ‘A charming piece,’ he added. ‘Early nineteenth-century. It comes from a local family, and was made to an ancestor’s design for his bride. It is said that she was a shy girl, and very gentle, and the amethysts were the nearest he could get to the colour of a violet, for that is how he thought of her.’

  ‘What a sweet story,’ said Venetia. ‘And how the family must have hated to part with it.’

  ‘The family has died out, unfortunately; the estate was sold and everything with it. I like to think that whoever buys it and wears it will remember its story.’

  They went presently, to peer into other shop windows and then return to the car. The short day was losing its light and they were a long way from Penn.

  ‘We’ll stop in Woodstock for tea,’ remarked the professor, getting into the car beside her.

  It was dark when they stopped again outside the Bear Inn, and it was lovely to go into the lighted rooms with their big fires. They had tea and muffins and talked idly, arguing occasionally in a friendly way, and laughing, too, but back in the car, sitting silent beside the professor’s great bulk, Venetia worried. It really would not do, she reflected. They had slipped into an easy friendship which was quite at variance with their allotted spheres. After today, she told herself, she would take care to avoid him. And possibly, once back at St Jude’s, he would avoid her—not intentionally, but for the simple reason that she would be one of dozens of student nurses who really had nothing to do with his own life, but were there to do his bidding and listen to his lectures.

  She gave a small sigh of satisfaction at having settled the matter, and the professor said, ‘I think we’d better take pity on Arthur and Lottie again, don’t you? Do you like Italian food?’

  ‘Pizzas?’ She shook her head. ‘No, not really.’

  ‘Not pizza.’ He smiled to himself.
‘It’s time you sampled lasagne properly made. There’s a place in Beaconsfield— Santella’s—and don’t worry, I’ll get you back to the cottage by ten o’clock. I dare say you’ll want to pack.’

  She opened her mouth to refuse, and then decided not to. After all, she wasn’t likely to be asked out to dinner again in a hurry. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘It sounds very nice.’

  She agreed that lasagne was not in the least like a pizza. Indeed, she liked it very much. She had enjoyed the carrot and coriander soup which had preceded it, too, and rounded off the meal with a lavish ice-cream which, as the professor pointed out, it was impossible to forgo since the restaurant was Italian, and the Italians were famous for their ices.

  True to his word, he took her back well before ten o’clock, and this time he didn’t stay, only reiterated that he would fetch her at eleven o’clock the next morning and she was to mind that she was ready.

  She stayed a little while talking to Lottie and Arthur after he had gone, and then went to her bed, tired but deeply content. It was only when she awakened in the night and remembered that she would be back on the ward in another day’s time, and wouldn’t see the professor—not to talk to, anyway—again, and that he was going back to Holland very shortly, that her contentment gave way to a feeling of loneliness, so strong that she was forced to tell herself not to give way to self-pity.

  By the time they had had breakfast and she had packed her case the professor was at the door, and it seemed to her, her farewells said and herself in the car beside him once more, that he was already dis-tancing himself from her. He had little to say other than a civil enquiry as to whether she had slept well, and the observation that it seemed likely to snow again, and there was no loitering on the way, either.

  He parked the car outside the entrance and got out to open her door and get her case from the boot, but when she put her hand out for it he ignored it, and carried the case through the doors and across the entrance hall to where the door to the nurses’ home was. He put it down then, and stood looking down at her, and it saddened her to see the look on his face: impersonal, almost indifferent. All the same, she put out a hand and said quietly, ‘Thank you very much, Professor. I—enjoyed all that driving, it was very kind of you.’