by Betty Neels
She had phoned her mother when she got back to England with the Professor but she had said nothing about Melville; that could wait until she and her mother were alone some time during her brief stay at home. As she drove she thought about the Professor, wondering if she had annoyed him in some way, but discarding the idea. It seemed more likely that he regarded her as a possible embarrassment, seeing that he was thinking about getting married; perhaps he was expecting her to take advantage of his kindness while she had been in Basle. ‘Well, he’s quite wrong,’ said Rachel loudly, and then, ‘All the same, I wish I knew what was the matter…’
She had left the hospital in the early evening but the traffic was heavy and it was late when she got home at last. Her parents were waiting for her, and over her supper she gave them an expurgated account of her week in Basle, aware that it was only too obvious that she was leaving out a great deal. But her mother and father said nothing to that effect, merely observing that it had been an experience, and that it must have been a tiring week for her. ‘Though your brothers are green with envy,’ said her mother. ‘Edward and Nick are going to Scotland during the holidays camping but they are already talking about hitchhiking round Europe.’
Her room welcomed her: all her childhood furniture, her dolls sitting in a row on the shelf her father had made for them, flowers in a bowl on the dressing-table. She unpacked her few things and went to bed and slept all night, although she hadn’t expected to.
She told her mother everything the next morning while they were sitting in the garden, shelling peas. It was easier than she had expected, partly because she had something to do while she talked. Her mother didn’t interrupt; now and again she made soothing murmurs and once drew in her breath sharply when Rachel repeated what Melville had said at the hotel. Rachel had finished and was blowing her nose in an effort not to cry when she spoke. ‘I’m sorry you’re unhappy, love, but look at it this way, you would have been even more unhappy if you had gone on seeing Melville, expecting to marry him, no doubt. Infatuation makes one blind but the nice part is that sooner or later you see again and it becomes something that doesn’t matter at all.’ She glanced sideways at her daughter’s unhappy face. ‘Professor van Teule was very kind—I wrote a letter to his mother, just to thank her, and she wrote back saying how much they had enjoyed having you. I suppose he’s back at the hospital too?’ The question was put so casually that Rachel answered without hesitation.
‘Oh, yes. He had a list the morning after we got back.’
‘So you’ve had a chance to talk about the conference…’
Rachel frowned. ‘Plenty, but we haven’t. You see, Mother, it’s all over and done with now, I expect he wants to forget it. He told me weeks ago that he hoped to get married soon.’
Her mother shelled quite a few peas before she said, ‘I wonder what she’s like…’
‘I’ve no idea. He never talks about himself and no one mentioned her when I was at his home. He did say that she liked his father’s house.’
‘Ah well, I dare say you’ll meet her one day.’ There was regret in her mother’s voice but Rachel didn’t notice it.
‘I don’t expect so. Actually, we’ve hardly spoken since we came back.’ She sighed soundlessly. ‘We’ve always been on good terms but we aren’t any more. He’s—he’s gone all distant.’
‘What a pity,’ observed Mrs Downing, and meant it.
Rachel went back on the following evening considerably refreshed. She had walked miles with Mutt, called on friends in the village, driven her father on his afternoon rounds and helped around the house, and she felt content. She refused to think about Melville but she had to admit to herself that she was glad that she wouldn’t have to meet any of his friends again. All those clothes in my cupboard, she reflected, and chuckled for the first time in days. And no more agonising over her face and hair either. She remembered then how she had sat at her dressing-table, putting herself to rights while the Professor had sat beside her, telephoning. She hadn’t given it a thought then because for some reason she hadn’t minded him seeing her looking a mess. She frowned a little over that; perhaps she had been in a state of shock. On the other hand she had to admit that if the same circumstances should arise again, she would think nothing of it. ‘Very odd,’ she said out loud.
It began to rain as she neared the hospital. It was an ugly building at the best of times; now it looked downright hideous and she would have to live and work in it, probably for years, until or unless she went somewhere else. She would get a post easily enough, she was a good theatre sister and the world was her oyster, but somewhere at the back of her mind was a niggling reluctance to leave the place.
She parked the Fiat and went through to her room, pausing, because she hadn’t been able to stop herself, by the letter racks to see if there were any letters for her. There was one envelope, from the Professor, containing a brief note; he hoped that she wouldn’t be greatly inconvenienced if he started his list half an hour earlier than usual—abdominal injuries—a man too shocked for immediate operation. It was signed with his initials.
Businesslike in the extreme, she thought, but only to be expected. She turned round and made her way up to the theatre wing and sat down at her desk in the office and checked the off duty book. There would be enough nurses on duty during the morning. She would have her breakfast early so that she could check theatre before she started to scrub. The night staff nurse was on duty; Rachel asked her to get things started ready for the morning’s work and then went along to her room, her personal difficulties ousted for the moment by plans for the morning.
The morning went well, just as hundreds of others had. The Professor was his usual calm self, George and Billy cheerfully friendly, the nurses on their mettle. The list was finished by half past one and Rachel went down to the canteen to consume cottage pie and cabbage, stewed prunes and custard. This uninspired menu set her in mind of the previous week’s food, way ahead of what was on her plate at the moment. She didn’t allow her thoughts to dwell on it but drank two cups of very strong tea and then went back to theatre.
The next day or so were uneventful but fortunately for her very busy. She had little time to brood and, to her relief, none of her friends had mentioned Melville once. If she had thought about this she might have found it strange, but she was almost feverish in her endeavour not to think of him at all.
The week had almost gone by when she was warned at the end of the day’s work that there was a real possibility of a kidney transplant within the next few hours. She set about getting organised, warning in her turn the nurses she would need, seeing that the second theatre was ready for use for any emergency, phoning the faithful Sidney. She scrubbed and laid up in readiness and then went to the sisters’ sitting-room to await events.
She had had supper and had gone back to sit curled up in a chair, reading the day’s news, before George phoned and told her that they would operate in an hour’s time. She put her cap on, slipped her feet back into her shoes and went back to theatre. The night staff nurse, whom she had warned, was already there and there was almost nothing to do. Rachel warned Sidney, made sure that the path lab, X-Ray department and the dispensary had been told, told the staff nurse to make tea and checked the theatre once more.
Half an hour later she gathered her nurses around her, replaced her cap with a theatre mob cap and went to scrub. If all was going well Dr Carr would be along with his patient within the next ten minutes. Everything was just as it should be as the Professor walked in. He made no apology for there was no need; everyone there knew that transplants took place to no set timetable. The operation started and no one so much as glanced at the clock.
The patient was a teenage boy with little chance of a normal life without a transplant; everyone in the theatre would willingly have spent twice as long there if it had been necessary. It wasn’t; the Professor completed his work, pronounced himself satisfied and the patient was borne away to the recovery room and then to the intensive
care unit. The Professor thanked his companions, and wandered out of the theatre with George in close attendance. Rachel, already busy with the clearing up, nodded to one of the nurses to go and get the coffee from the kitchen. The men would need a drink; she could do with one herself. When the worst of the clearing away had been done, she sent the nurses off duty, and began on the wearying task of readying the theatre for the morning, now only four or five hours away.
It was another half-hour before she was ready to leave. The night runner was in the sluice; Rachel wished her goodnight and went along to her office.
The Professor was there, standing by the window, looking out into the night. He glanced over his shoulder as she went in. ‘Finished?’ he asked.
‘Very nearly, sir.’ She sat down at the desk and began to record the operation in her neat handwriting, suddenly conscious of her capless head and shining nose, made all the worse by the elegance of the Professor’s appearance.
She closed the book and he said quietly, ‘Go to bed, Rachel.’
She stood up. ‘You wanted something, Professor?’
He strolled to the door. ‘Oh, yes, but not just at the moment.’ He paused at the door and turned to look at her. His smile was amused and tender and her eyes widened. Melville had never looked at her like that and she didn’t know what to make of it, and she had no way of finding out because he had gone with a quiet, ‘Goodnight.’
She told herself as she tumbled into bed that she had imagined his look; she was tired and still feeling the sharpness of her break with Melville. She was too sleepy to admit that she didn’t feel anything of the sort.
She didn’t see the Professor the next day and for some reason she felt peevish, ticking off the nurses with unwonted sharpness and even biting Norah’s head off over some trivial matter. She apologised immediately, adding in a bewildered manner, ‘I don’t know what’s the matter with me, Norah. At least I don’t think so.’ She hadn’t told anyone about Melville, not even Lucy, but now suddenly it didn’t matter any more if everyone knew. ‘I saw Melville in Basle—with another girl. He told me plainly that we were finished. It was a blow but I think my pride was more hurt than my heart. It—it was a bit of a surprise.’
‘No one ever thought he was good enough for you,’ declared Norah stoutly. ‘He’ll make a rotten husband—if he ever marries.’
‘So why do I feel so wretched?’
Norah preserved a prudent silence, only murmuring nothings. She had her own ideas about that.
Rachel discovered the answer for herself the next morning. She had been to the dispensary to do battle with the dispenser, a middle-aged acidulated man who dispensed his pills and medicines as though they were drops of his life blood. Rachel had spent five minutes of valuable time upon prising a bottle of surgical spirit from the miserly grasp and now, flushed with triumph, started on her way back to the theatre wing. There were several routes she could take; she chose the one which would take her past the letter racks. Tom had told her that he and Natalie were intending to marry quite soon and as soon as they had decided on a date, he would let her know. There might be a letter from him. There was. Tucking it into her pocket, she turned round to find the Professor right behind her.
‘Melville?’ he asked.
‘Melville.’ She repeated the name as though she had never heard it before. ‘No—my brother Tom, he’s going to be married. He said he’d write and tell me the date.’
The Professor’s face remained impassive at this news, although his eyes gleamed beneath their lids. He said nothing, just stood there looking at her and she stared back, going slowly pink in the face. Her mother had been quite right; she had said that sooner or later she would see again, and she saw now with a clarity which took her breath away and sent her heart racing. Melville might never have been; it was this gentle giant she loved, and why hadn’t she realised it before? She had always been at ease with him, she had howled her eyes out in front of him and not felt in the least ashamed of it, she had even sat down and done her hair and face without giving his presence a thought. Oh, she had been as blind as a bat and now, too late, she wasn’t. A pity she hadn’t stayed blind, then she wouldn’t have minded in the least that he was going to marry. The appalling thought struck her that he knew exactly what she was thinking.
She said in a high voice not in the least like her usual serene tones, ‘I have to get back to theatre… Surgical spirit,’ she added inanely, and, because he was smiling now, ‘The instrument cupboards,’ she babbled and whisked past him, cheeks still hot, chaotic thoughts tumbling around in her head, to get away as far as possible and never see Radmer again. The thought was so agonising that she dismissed it at once. Indeed, if her heart had had its way she would have turned round and run straight back and flung herself into his arms. Which, of course, wouldn’t do at all. Common sense took over: she went into theatre, dealt with a difference of opinion between Mrs Pepys and the senior student nurse, threatening to reach alarming proportions, checked that the second theatre was ready for Mr Sims, who had a short list that morning, and went to her office. Norah would scrub for Mr Sims and when he’d finished Mrs Pepys could take the dental list. It was a quiet day workwise; she would get the off-duty rota seen to, catch up on the various forms she was required to fill in from time to time and go off duty at five o’clock, wash her hair and have an early night.
She had been sitting at her desk doing nothing at all for all of ten minutes when the phone rang. It was Miss Marks and at the sound of her voice Rachel hastily reviewed the last few days, trying to remember if anything had gone wrong. Mrs Pepys was always threatening to go to the office about this, that and the other; she supposed it was something to do with her.
‘Sister Downing,’ Miss Marks’s voice sounded severe. ‘Will you go to the consultants’ room now. Professor van Teule wishes to speak to you.’
‘Whatever for?’ asked Rachel, forgetting all about being civil to one’s superiors at all times.
‘I do not know, Sister,’ Miss Marks’s voice was rebuking. ‘I presume he will tell you. Be good enough not to keep him waiting.’ She rang off and Rachel got up and went to peer in the mirror to see if her cap was on straight and her nose wasn’t shining. At the moment she could think of no reason why the Professor should want to see her and she was to be given no time in which to speculate about it. She went to tell Norah and then made her way to the wide corridor on the other side of the entrance hall where the consultants spent any spare time they had in comfort.
She tapped on the door and went in and the Professor, sitting on the edge of the massive table in the centre of the room, got up and came towards her. She did her best to be her usual calm self; she had become a little pale at the thought of seeing him and her eyes were full of questions, but she had clenched her hands to stop their trembling and when she spoke her voice was almost normal.
‘You wanted me, sir?’
He had come to a halt before her. ‘I’ve wanted you for a long time now, Rachel.’ He smiled a little at her look of utter surprise. ‘But you didn’t know that until an hour or two ago, did you?’
He paused and looked at her and she knew that he expected an answer. ‘No, I didn’t. Mother said…she said that infatuation had made me blind but that one day I’d see again.’ She added very worriedly, ‘But I don’t think we ought to talk like this—you’re going to marry, aren’t you? I’m not sure what you wanted to see me about, but could we stop now? We’ve always been good friends and it would be nice to go on being that.’
He said with a good deal of warmth, ‘It would not be nice, it would be an untenable situation. I am in love with you, Rachel.’
She closed her eyes for a moment. The sheer joy of hearing him say that made her feel quite giddy, but only for a moment. She opened them again and looked at him steadily. ‘I love you, too. I wouldn’t have told you of course…’ She said loudly, ‘Oh, this is a strange conversation in a most unsuitable place. If Miss Marks knew she would have a stroke.’
‘Let us forget Miss Marks. You said you loved me, it sounded nice. Will you say it again, my darling?’
‘I’m not your darling. Oh, how can I be? Perhaps you’re infatuated with me, like I was with Melville, and you’ll wake up and look at your fiancée and know that you love her more than anything in the world.’
‘I said you were my darling, and you are and you always will be. Listen to me now. Weeks ago I told you that I hoped to get married. From the simple statement you have fashioned a fiancée who doesn’t exist. You silly girl, did it never enter your head that I might be in love with you?’ He made ‘silly girl’ sound like an endearment.
‘No, never.’ She went close to him and put out a shy hand on to his sleeve. ‘I thought of you as a friend. I didn’t mind you seeing me when I cried or my hair fell down or I was tired, but I know now that it was all part of loving you, if you see what I mean. But you never…That is, I never thought that you loved me. Is that why you wanted to see me?’
His arms were round her, holding her very close. ‘Yes, my dearest darling, it was.’ He bent and kissed her and then kissed her again. ‘Will you marry me, Rachel?’
‘Oh, yes, of course I will!’ Her pale face was beautifully pink now, and her eyes shone. ‘When?’
He threw back his head and let out a bellow of laughter. ‘If I had my way, this very minute, but there is the question of the licence. How about a week’s time? Can we assemble the families by then, the church, the parson…’
‘My dress.’ She smiled up at him. ‘If we really want to, we can.’
‘We’ll make it five days.’ He kissed her slowly. ‘Now we’ll go and see Miss Marks.’ And, at her look of enquiry, ‘So that you can leave, dear heart.’