by Betty Neels
It was the last thing she would ever do! If she hadn’t needed the money she would have given it back to him with the greatest of pleasure; it only served to highlight the gulf between them. She gave a little gasp when he said softly: ‘I get paid too, Becky—you don’t have to look like that.’
He went to the door. ‘I shall see you from time to time at the hospital, I daresay. I hope that you will enjoy your work and be happy here.’
She said thank you in a quiet little voice; he might dislike her and find her a nuisance, but he was the last link between her and the sheltered life she had been leading for the past month. She had a ridiculous urge to ask him to stay—just for a little while— while she got used to the idea of being on her own, but she had hindered him long enough; he would want to dash back to his Nina. He waited by the door for a moment as though he expected her to say more than that, and when she didn’t speak he went away.
But there was too much to do for her to be lonely for long. Mevrouw Botte had stocked her cupboard with milk and enough food to feed them that evening and the following morning; she looked it over with satisfaction before unpacking her case, arranging the animals’ box to their satisfaction and then, because it was still a warm light evening, introducing them to the balcony. It was quite late by the time they had had their suppers and tidied up, and she had turned the bed into a bed again and gone as silently as possible down the stairs with them both to take a walk in the nearby small park.
It was a far cry from the luxurious bedroom she had been sleeping in, but it was an even further cry from her unhappy life in her stepmother’s house. Becky curled up in her narrow bed and slept, though not before stifling a pang of regret for the pleasant life she had been leading. ‘At least I know now how the other half lives,’ she told herself, and Bertie and Pooch, disturbed by her voice, muttered back at her.
She was on duty at half past seven in the morning, which meant getting up at six o’clock, taking Bertie and Pooch for their walk, having a quick breakfast and walking to the hospital, but she would be home before four o’clock, with the whole evening to call her own. She skipped along the narrow pavement in the fresh bright morning, eager to start but a little nervous too.
But she need not have been; she had barely had time to change into her white uniform dress and tuck her hair under the plain white cap before a big girl with very fair hair and blue eyes shot into the cloakroom where the living out nurses changed and begged her, in English, to go with her. The hospital was light and airy and modern. Becky, who had trained in a hospital which was a veritable nest of small passages and endless staircases, found herself whisked into a life and borne upwards to a wide corridor lined with closed doors. ‘Administration,’ breathed her guide, and added in a friendly voice: ‘My name is Riet—Riet van Blom.’ She paused to hold out a hand which Becky shook.
‘I’m Rebecca Saunders—Becky everyone calls me.’
They smiled at each other as Riet stopped before a door and knocked on it. Before she sped away she said hurriedly: ‘I see you at coffee. I work also on the medical wards.’
Becky turned the handle and walked in. The Directrice sitting behind the desk in the severely furnished office was elderly, small and very round, with a severe hairstyle which made no attempt to keep up with fashion and very bright blue eyes. She wished Becky good morning and bade her sit before refreshing her memory from the papers before her.
‘Doctor Raukema gives you a good reference,’ she observed, ‘and it is upon this I offer you the post of diploma’d nurse on the medical wards. You already know your salary; I told you during your first interview, and your working hours will be told to you by the Hoofd Zuster of your ward. Your Dutch lessons will commence immediately—they will be given during your duty hours, but you will be expected to study during your free time as well. If at the end of a month you are unable to reach the not very high standard we have set, then I am afraid we shall no longer be able to employ you.’ She smiled suddenly. ‘But I think there is little likelihood of that.’ She rang a little bell and a door opened to reveal an elderly woman in a dark blue uniform. ‘Juffrouw Markela will take you to your ward. I hope that you will be very happy with us.’
Becky murmured suitably and followed Juffrouw Markela from the office, glad that one hurdle had been crossed. It proved to be the first of many that morning, though; the wards looked the same; small six-bedded rooms leading off from a central area where the nurses’ station stood, but there were any number of them and it was difficult at first to distinguish one from the other. All the doors looked alike, and so did the patients lying in their beds. Becky, flying rapidly behind Riet, discovered after the first panic that it was rather like the hospital had been at Leeds. The six ladies in the first ward she went into were all suffering from chest infections and it really didn’t matter what it might be called in Dutch, the condition was exactly the same as she had nursed countless times in England, so that it didn’t matter so very much that she could understand only one word in twenty or so; the routine was the same.
It was the same in all the wards and after a little while she began to gain some confidence, especially as some of the patients could speak a little English. And during the coffee break, she went downstairs with the cheerful Riet and met several more nurses, all of whom seemed prepared to accept her as one of themselves. She went back, much heartened by their friendliness, to plunge into the round of treatments, the giving of medicines and the making of beds.
She was going down to her dinner with two other nurses when she saw the Baron coming up the stairs they were going down. He was accompanied by his registrar, several housemen, a clerk bearing an armful of notes and a fierce-looking lady whom Becky took to be the social worker. She stood a little on one side to allow the party to pass her on the stairs and the Baron glanced at her briefly, accorded her the slightest of smiles as he drew level and continued on his way. Becky stared after him; she hadn’t really expected him to stop, but she had hoped that he might.
She was tired when she reached her little flat that afternoon, but she forgot that in the delight of seeing Bertie and Pooch, sitting contentedly on the balcony, obviously nicely settled in. They all had tea and then she changed into a cotton dress and took them both for a walk in the park. It was cooler now and everyone was hurrying home from work. Becky climbed the stairs once more and once in her flat found herself wishing that she had a radio to break the quiet. But she didn’t need one, she reminded herself. She had her Dutch lessons to study; she had had her first lesson that afternoon and it was all-important that she should learn that language as quickly as possible. She took a chair on to the balcony and with the animals sprawled at her feet, spent the next hour or so with her head in her books.
The next day was easier. She was on duty at ten o’clock until six in the evening, which meant that she could take Bertie and Pooch for their airing before going to the local shops for her food. It was a long time to leave her pets alone, although they had often had to spend whole days hidden away when Basil was in one of his tempers and Becky hadn’t thought it safe for them to be at large, at his mercy. She fed them, tidied her little home and walked to work. And when she got off duty that evening she was too tired to do more than the usual walk in the park, make herself tea and toast, and go to bed early.
And the next day she was tired too, for she had late duty; from one o’clock until eight in the evening, but she was getting into the swing of the work now and it was easier, and Sister Tutor had been pleased with her progress with her Dutch lessons. She went to bed well content and lay for a little while going over her day.
She had seen the Baron again, for old Mevrouw Fiske, a heart patient, had had a mild coronary during the afternoon and the houseman, hastily summoned with the panic team, had been preceded by Doctor Raukema. It was Becky who had seen the old lady’s sudden collapse, pressed the panic bell, flung the pillows to the ground, and with the patient flat on the bed, begun cardiac massage. By rights the patient sho
uld have been laid on the floor, but that was beyond her strength, and someone else should have been administering oxygen. Becky, working away at manual compression, sixty times a minute, had no time to worry about anything else. The panic bell should bring help within seconds, and it did— the panic team, running from their various duties, the houseman on duty, who had just left the floor and had further than anyone else to run, and the Baron, who happened to be passing the ward when Becky pressed the bell. Well ahead of everyone else, he had the patient on the floor and had taken over from Becky with a brief order for her to start mouth-to-mouth resuscitation before the team and its trolley arrived. The anaesthetist took over from Becky then and at a kindly nod of dismissal from Hoofd Zuster Witma, she slipped away, back to the six-bedded ward on the other side of the corridor where she had been going in the first place. It had been sheer luck that she had happened to peer into Mevrouw Fiske’s room as she went past…
She was arranging Juffrouw Drummel in her chair, preparatory to making that lady’s bed before the three o’clock cup of tea came round for the patients, when the half-open door was thrust open and the Baron walked in. He wished the six inmates a pleasant good day and then crossed the ward to where Becky was making the bed.
‘Mevrouw Fiske has recovered,’ he told her, watching her mitre a corner very neatly.
Becky straightened up. ‘I’m very glad, sir—thank you for coming to tell me.’ She was still holding the blanket, ready to turn it down neatly.
He frowned at her. ‘Naturally I would tell you; your prompt action undoubtedly saved her life.’ He turned on his heel, wished the patients goodbye with great courtesy and went away. ‘For all the world as though I were to blame for the whole thing!’ muttered Becky darkly, giving the pillows a tremendous pummelling.
Before she slept she cried a little, although she had no idea why.
She was on duty at ten o’clock the next morning. She was beginning to get into the routine now and it was astonishing how many words she had picked up, mispronounced for the most part and heavily frowned upon by Sister Tutor if she uttered them during her lesson period, but she no longer felt so foreign, and the nurses were friendly too and the registrar had stopped and asked her how she was getting on. With Bertie and Pooch nicely settled for the day, she sped to work.
She hurried home just as quickly that evening. It had seemed a long day and a hot one, but now the evening was a little cooler; she would take her pets for their usual walk in the park and have scrambled eggs for her supper… She climbed the stairs slowly. Her day had been heavy, the wards were full and because she had to be doubly sure of everything, nursing, as it were, in another language, as well as saying everything twice so that even her monosyllabic remarks could be understood, her work was that much harder. All the same she was happy; her steps quickened as she reached the third landing and got out her key. She could hear Bertie breathing deeply under the door and Pooch uttering the raucous miaouw which was his welcome to her. She opened the door to meet their delighted onslaught.
She fed them first and then, with the promise of a walk, went to take a shower and change into a dress. She was getting a little tired of her scanty wardrobe now; she would buy herself something new in another week, once she had had her first pay packet, in the meantime the blue cotton would have to do. She brushed her hair and left it loose and dug bare feet into sandals. She hadn’t bothered overmuch with make-up, it was too warm, but she applied lipstick hurriedly and went in search of Bertie’s lead. She was on her knees with her head under the divan when someone knocked on the door and she called ‘Kom binnen.’ It would be Mevrouw Botte who had promised her some eggs from her daughter’s farm.
It wasn’t Mevrouw Botte. The Baron strolled in, eyed Becky’s lower half sticking out from under the divan and remarked severely: ‘You should never tell anyone to come in unless you know who it is, Becky.’
She came out backwards, the lead in her hand, and got to her feet, quite unembarrassed because somehow she never was with him. ‘Well, I thought it was Mevrouw Botte with the eggs,’ she explained. ‘Who else would come here?’
‘I would perhaps,’ suggested her visitor blandly, and she said quickly:
‘Oh, lord—have I done something wrong on the ward? I do try to be careful, but it’s such a frightful language, isn’t it?’
He agreed gravely and assured her that there was nothing amiss. ‘Indeed, everyone is very pleased with your progress.’ He looked around him. ‘You’re comfortable here?’
‘Yes, thank you.’ Becky looked at him, wondering why he had come.
‘Good. I thought that we might go out this evening so that I can catch up on your—er—career.’
She was so surprised that she couldn’t think of anything to say. Why should he bother to climb all those stairs just to ask her that when he could have done it much more easily at the hospital?
‘Well, that’s very kind of you, but I’m not…I haven’t anything to wear.’
The Baron’s face remained bland, showing no sign of the rapid changes he was making in his plans for the evening.
‘You look just right to me for a picnic.’
Becky’s face cleared. ‘Oh, a picnic!’ She added soberly: ‘But I can’t, thank you all the same—Bertie and Pooch, you know, they’ve been shut up all day and I’ve promised them a walk in the park.’
‘Lola’s in the car, they can come too.’ He opened the door. ‘I’ve a message from Sutske for Mevrouw Botte—I’ll wait for you downstairs.’ He paused. ‘I quite forgot, Tialda sends her love. If you’re free tomorrow she wants to take you out to lunch. Can you manage that?’ He smiled faintly at her happy nod. ‘And my mother—she sends her love also—she wishes you to have tea with her. Tialda will arrange that, I expect.’
He shut the door quietly behind him and Becky listened to his feet on the stairs. She still couldn’t imagine why he had called to see her unless it was a sense of duty, which it most likely was. She put Pooch’s harness on and fastened the lead on Bertie’s elderly neck, then went out of her little flat, locking the door carefully and with a sense of pride at being able to do so.
The Baron had possessed himself of Mevrouw Botte’s telephone and when Willem answered he had given instant and crisp directions: Willem was to cancel the table the Baron had booked for that evening at the exclusive hotel Borg de Breedenburg and ask Sutske to come to the telephone at once. ‘I want a picnic basket for two,’ he told his housekeeper, ‘cold supper and coffee, and tell Willem to put in a bottle of that Moselle—the sweet one.’ He had listened patiently to Sutske’s scolding voice and when she had finished: ‘Dear kind Sutske, you know you don’t mean a word of it.’
There was a snort at the other end. ‘And you know you never drink that sweet Moselle…’
‘Just for this once I’m going to, Sutske, do your best—you can have fifteen minutes.’
Sutske snorted again. ‘You’re no better than when you were a little boy,’ she observed sternly and added: ‘Willem will be waiting with it, Baron.’
He was in the hall, looking as though he had been waiting for quite some time by the time Becky got there.
It was only a little more than twenty miles to the Baron’s house and the road was a good one; the animals shared the back seat and Becky, sitting in front, made polite conversation. It was difficult to think of something to talk about; she didn’t think that her companion would be interested in her dayto-day activities, for they hadn’t amounted to much so far. She worried away at the weather like a dog with a bone and felt relief when he turned in at the gates and stopped outside the house. ‘To collect the picnic,’ he told her blandly, and got out to speak to the waiting Willem.
The picnic basket was stowed away in the boot, Willem accorded her a nice smile and retreated to the steps as the Baron started the Rolls. When it was quite out of sight he made his slow way back to the kitchen to remark to Sutske: ‘I have never known the master so kindly disposed towards a young lady so lacking in l
ooks and chic, not that she isn’t a very nice young lady indeed.’ He added deliberately: ‘Depend upon it, he is sorry for her.’ He heaved a sigh. ‘When I think of all the beautiful young ladies he has been interested in…’
‘It isn’t always looks,’ observed Sutske darkly, ‘though the child could do with more flesh on her bones. I’ve put in plenty of good food. I wonder where they’re going?’
Becky was wondering too. The Baron, carrying on an easy conversation, had taken a side road leading to the coast to the north of his home, presently he turned again on to a narrow dyke road winding between the fields, which led to wooded country a mile or so ahead of them.
‘This is pretty,’ observed Becky. ‘I like trees,’ and then, as he turned into an open gateway and on to a sandy lane: ‘Oh—isn’t this private?’
The Baron’s voice was casual. ‘Yes, but I know the owner—he has no objection to my coming here.’
A favourite picnicking place for the Baron and Nina, perhaps? Becky stifled a sigh and looked around her. The lane had opened out to a broader road running between meadows, and nicely sheltered by a variety of trees a house stood a little to one side. It was a farmhouse, spick and span with new paint and shining windows and geraniums encircling it like a glowing necklace. As they passed it Becky craned her neck to see it.
‘Is it really a farm? It looks so—so well cared for.’
‘It is, and it’s a farm—pedigree cattle and horses.’
‘Your friend’s lucky. How lovely to live here— animals and trees—lovely for children.’
‘He’s not married.’
‘He doesn’t live here all alone, surely?’ She added: ‘What a waste!’
‘Well, no—he comes here at weekends and during holidays.’