by Betty Neels
She sat down on one of the easy chairs scattered about the pleasant room and waited quietly for someone to say something. It was Kate who spoke.
‘Of course it’s Steven’s fault. I bet,’ she continued with her unerring habit of fastening on the truth, ‘he’s not in love with her. She’s Dad’s only daughter, isn’t she? There’ll be some money later on, and a partnership now.’
She glanced at Sarah’s face, which was expressionless, and said with devastating candour, ‘I’m right, aren’t I? Sarah? Only you’ll not admit it.’
She made a small snorting noise, indicative of indignation and echoed by everyone else in the room, because Sarah was liked and Steven had played her a rotten trick. A small dark girl who had been curled up by the fire and had so far said nothing got to her feet.
‘There’s a new film on at the Leicester Square. Let’s all go—if we’re quick we can just manage it, and we can eat at Holy Joe’s on the way back. It’s only spaghetti for supper anyway.’
Her fortitudinous suggestion was received with a relief everyone did their best to conceal. They were all sorry for Sarah, but they knew her enough to know that the last thing she wanted from them was pity. They went in a body to the cinema, sweeping her along with them, and afterwards had a rather noisy supper at Joe’s. It was after ten as they walked back through the mean little back streets of the East End to the hospital. It was a long walk, but they had agreed among themselves that it would be a good idea to tire Sarah out, so that she would sleep and not look quite so awful in the morning as she had done all day.
But she didn’t sleep that night either—she still looked beautiful when she went on duty the next morning, but she had no colour at all, and her eyes were haggard. She would have to see Steven; work with him, talk to him until dinner time. It was Mr Peppard’s surgical OP, and Steven would naturally be there too. She could of course tell one of the staff nurses to take the clinic and make herself scarce at the other end of the department, but pride forbade her. She did the usual round, making sure that patients were being weighed, tests done, X-rays fetched, and Path. Lab. forms collected. It was almost time for the clinic to open when she had done. She went into her office—she would have time to sketch out the off-duty rota before nine o’clock. She had barely sat down at her desk when Steven came in. Sarah looked up briefly, said ‘Good morning’ with quiet affability and went on with her writing. He stood awkwardly by the door, and when she didn’t say anything else, said sulkily:
‘I’m sorry, Sarah. I didn’t know you were so serious about it all—I mean, we were only good pals, after all. I never said I’d marry you …’
Sarah put down her pen at that, gave him a haughty look, and said with deliberation, ‘Aren’t you being just a little conceited, Steven? No, you never asked me to marry you, so aren’t you anticipating my answer? The one I might have made, that is. There’s no point in raking over a dead fire, is there?’ She had gone rather red in the face, and was regrettably aware that her lip was trembling. She went on sharply, ‘Now do go away; I want to get this done before Mr Peppard comes.’
He went then, and she was left to sit alone, staring in front of her, the off-duty rota forgotten.
She went to first dinner, leaving Staff to finish Mr Peppard’s clinic. Dr van Elven had his OP at one-thirty—he liked his patients ready and waiting when he arrived, and as he didn’t keep other people waiting himself, Sarah did her best to achieve this state of affairs, although it often meant a wild race against time between the clinics. It was one of her lucky days, however. She was ready to start, with the first patient waiting in the little dressing room and the nurse outside already hovering over the second, and there were still five minutes to go. She had had no time to tidy herself. She began feverishly to do so now—showering powder over her pretty nose in a vain effort to cover its redness, and putting on far too much lipstick. She was tucking her hair into a neat pleat, her mouth full of pins, when Dr van Elven stalked in. He was never early—she was so surprised that she opened her mouth and all the pins scattered on the floor. He put down his case on the desk and went and picked them up for her and handed them back gravely. He gave her a quick, searching glance as he wished her good afternoon; a look which she was convinced saw right through the powder. She was annoyed to feel herself blushing—not that it mattered, for he was standing, half turned away from her, reading up the first patient’s notes.
For some reason which she couldn’t understand, she didn’t want him to know about Steven. Of course, in time, he was bound to find out—news leaked through even to the most exhalted of the senior staff. He had been one of the first to know when she had started going out with Steven; she remembered with awful clarity how he had asked her lightly if she would like being a surgeon’s wife. She thought that she had no more tears left, but now, at this most awkward of moments, they rose in a solid lump into her throat. She swallowed them back resolutely and heard his calm voice asking her to fetch in the first patient. He looked up as he spoke and gave her a long steady look, and she was all at once aware that he knew all about it. She lifted her chin and went past him to the door to bring in his patient.
The clinic was a long one that afternoon. The medical registrar was on holiday; it meant that one of the house physicians was dealing with blood samples and blood sugars and any of the various tests Dr van Elven wanted done at once. He was nervous and therefore a little slow; when they stopped for five minutes to snatch a cup of tea cooling on its tray, there was still a formidable number of patients to see. Of these, two had to be admitted immediately, and several were sent to X-Ray, which meant that Dr van Elven had to sit patiently while the wet films were fetched by a nurse. It was six o’clock by the time the last patient had gone. Sarah had never known him so late before, and even now he evinced no desire to go home. He sat writing endless notes, and even a couple of letters, because the secretary had gone at five-thirty. Sarah cleared up the afternoon’s litter around the department locking doors and inspecting sluices and making sure that there were no patients lurking in the cubicles. When she got back, he had apparently finished, for the desk was cleared of papers, and his case was closed. He got up as she went into the consulting room.
‘Mrs Brown is to come in the day after tomorrow, I believe, Sister?’
Sarah said yes, she was, and had he fetched the cat.
‘Not yet,’ he answered seriously. ‘I wonder if you would do me the favour of coming with me to Mrs Brown’s—er—home? It seems to me to be a good idea if we were to take her to Richmond with the cat; she could meet my housekeeper and then go on to hospital. If you were there too … I believe that you are free on Saturday mornings?’
She was always free on Saturday mornings—she wondered why he asked, because after all these years he must surely know. But she had nothing to do; it would fill the hours before she came on duty after dinner. She replied:
‘Yes, certainly, sir. Shall I meet you there?’ She thought a moment. ‘Mrs Brown lives in Phipps Street, doesn’t she?’
The doctor nodded. ‘Yes. But I will fetch you from the Home. Would eleven o’clock suit you?’
He waited only long enough for her to murmur a rather surprised Yes before he went, calling a brief goodnight over his shoulder.
She went to the front door of the Home exactly on the hour on Saturday morning to find him waiting. The Iso Grigo looked sleek and powerful, and it was very comfortable. Dr van Elven got out and walked round and opened the door for her—something Steven had seldom done. Her spirits lifted a little, to drop to her shoes as the car slid to the gate and purred to a halt to allow Steven’s Mini to pass them, going the other way. She had a glimpse of his face, gazing at her with a stunned surprise, then he had passed them and they themselves were out in the street. She remembered then that it was Steven’s habit to play squash each Saturday and that he invariably returned at eleven. She wondered if the man beside her knew that, and decided that he didn’t, but her flattened ego lifted a little—the small
incident would give Steven something to think about.
She felt all of a sudden more cheerful and was able to utter a few pointless remarks about the weather, to which Dr van Elven made courteous replies in a casual voice. He was so relaxed himself that she began to relax too and even to feel pleased that she had dressed with such care. She had read once, a long time ago, when such advice seemed laughingly improbable, that it was of the utmost importance for a girl who had been jilted to take the greatest pains with her appearance. Well, she had. She had put on her new tweed suit—a rather dashing outfit in tobacco brown—and complemented it with brown calf shoes and handbag. She felt pleased that she had taken such sound advice, and pondered the advisability of getting a new hat until, obedient to the doctor’s request, she peered out of the window to look for number 169. Phipps Street was endless, edged with smoke-grimed Victorian houses, the variety of whose curtains bore testimony to the number of people they sheltered; the pavements were crowded with children playing, housewives hurrying along with loaded baskets, and old men leaning against walls, doing nothing at all. Sarah said on a sigh, ‘How drab it all is—how can they live here?’
The doctor eased the car past a coal cart. ‘And yet you choose to work here.’
‘Yes. But I go home three or four times a year—I can escape.’ She broke off to point out the house they were making for, and he brought the car to halt between a milk float and an ice-cream van with a smooth action which earned her admiration. They had barely set foot upon the pavement before a small crowd had collected. The doctor smiled lightly at the curious faces around them and applied himself to the elderly knocker upon the front door. Several faces from various windows peered out, and after a good look, the windows were opened. The nearest framed a large man with a belligerent eye. ‘‘Oo d’yer want?’ he enquired without enthusiasm.
Dr van Elven said simply, ‘Mrs Brown.’
‘Ah,’ said the man, and disappeared, to reappear a moment later at the door. ‘You’ll be the doctor,’ he remarked importantly. ‘Second floor back. Mind the stairs, there’s a bit of rail missing.’ He stared at them both and then stood back to let them pass him into the small dark hall. ‘I’ll keep an eye on that there car,’ he offered.
‘Thank you.’ The doctor had produced some cigarettes from a pocket of his well-cut tweed suit and offered them silently. The man took one, said, ‘Ta’ and waved a muscled arm behind him. ‘Up there.’
They mounted the stairs with a certain amount of caution, the doctor restraining her with a hand on her shoulder. She remembering the missing rail. They were on the first landing when Sarah said:
‘You don’t smoke cigarettes—only a pipe.’
He paused, a step ahead of her, and smiled over his shoulder.
‘How—er—observant of you. They’re useful to carry around in these parts; they smooth the way, I find.’
They went on climbing and she wondered why he talked as if he was in the habit of frequenting similar houses in similar streets. Most unlikely, she decided, when he lived in Richmond and had rooms in Harley Street and a large private practice to boot.
The second landing was smaller, darker, and smelled. The doctor’s splendid nose flared fastidiously, but he said nothing. Sarah had wrinkled her own small nose too; it gave her the air of a rather choosy angel. The doctor glanced at her briefly, and then, as though unable to help himself, he looked again before he knocked on the door before them.
They entered in answer to Mrs Brown’s voice, and found themselves in a small room, depressingly painted in tones of spinach green and margarine, and furnished with a bed, table and chairs which were much too big for it. Mrs Brown was sitting in one of the chairs and when she attempted to get up, said breathily, ‘Well, well, this is nice and no mistake. I ain’t ‘ad visitors for I dunno ‘ow long.’ She beamed at them both. ‘‘Ow about a nice cuppa?’
Rather to Sarah’s surprise, the doctor said that yes, he could just do with one, and drew forward an uncomfortable chair and invited her to sit in it. The twinkle in his eye was kindly but so pronounced that she said hastily, ‘May I get the tea while you and Mrs Brown talk?’ and left him to lower himself cautiously on to the chair, which creaked in protest under his not inconsiderable weight.
Making the tea was quite a complicated business, for it involved going out on to the landing and filling the kettle from the tap there, which presumably everyone adjacent to it shared, and setting it on the solitary gas ring in a corner of the room. She found teapot, cups and sugar, and was hunting for the milk when Mrs Brown broke off her conversation to say:
‘In a tin, Sister dear, under the shelf. I can’t get down to the milkman all that easy, and tinned milk makes a good cuppa tea, I always says.’
The tea was rich and brown and syrupy. Sarah sat in the chair which the doctor had vacated and inquired for Timmy.
Mrs Brown put down her cup. ‘Bless ‘im, ‘e knows I’m going.’ Her elderly voice shook and Sarah made haste to say kindly, ‘Only for a week or so, Mrs Brown, and you’ll soon feel so much better.’
‘That’s as may be,’ Mrs Brown replied darkly. ‘I wouldn’t go to no ‘ospital for no one but Doc ‘ere.’ She drew a wheezy breath. ‘Timmy, come on out ter yer mum!’
Timmy came from under the bed—an elderly, lean cat with battle-scarred ears and magnificent whiskers. He climbed into the old lady’s lap, butted her gently with his bullet head, and purred.
‘Nice, ain’t ‘e?’ his owner asked. ‘Pals, we are—don’t know as ‘ow I wants ter go …’
Dr van Elven turned from his contemplation of the neigh-bouring chimney pots. His voice was gentle.
‘Mrs Brown, if you will consent to go to hospital now, and stay for two weeks, there will be no chance of you waking up one morning and not feeling well enough to get out of bed. You remember I explained that to you. What would happen to Timmy then? Surely it is better to know that he is safe and cared for now than run the risk of not being able to look after him?’ He picked up her coat from the bed. ‘Shall we go? You will be able to see where he will be and who will be looking after him.’
He sounded persuasive and kind and quite sure of what he was talking about. The old lady got up, and allowed herself to be helped into her coat, put on the shapeless hat with a fine disregard as to her appearance, and pronounced herself ready. When they reached the pavement, the small crowd was still there, kept firmly under control by the man who had opened the door to them. He accepted the remainder of the cigarettes from the doctor, shut the car doors firmly upon them and saluted smartly.
‘‘E’s me landlord,’ Mrs Brown informed them from the back of the car. ‘Real gent ‘e is. Let me orf me rent.’ She settled back, Timmy perched on her lap, apparently unimpressed by his surroundings. Sarah didn’t look at the doctor, but she had the feeling that they were thinking the same thing. She was proved right when he murmured:
‘Bis dat qui cito dat.’
She said. ‘Oh, Latin. Something about giving, isn’t it?’
The man beside her chuckled. ‘He who gives quickly, gives twice.’
‘That’s what I thought too, only in English. He didn’t look as though he’d give a crumb to a bird, and I don’t suppose he could really afford to lose the rent, even for a couple of weeks.’
Dr van Elven said briefly, ‘No,’ then glanced at his watch. ‘You’re on at half past one, are you not? It’s just gone half past eleven. Time enough; we’ll go by the back ways.’
He knew his London, that was evident; he didn’t hesitate once, but wove his way in and out of streets which all looked alike, until she wasn’t at all sure where they were. It was a surprise when they crossed the river, and she recognised Putney Bridge. They turned into Upper Richmond Road very shortly after, then into Richmond itself and so to the river. The doctor’s house was one of a row of Georgian bow-fronted houses set well back from the road, with their own private thoroughfare and an oblique view of the water, which was only a couple of hundred yards away.
It was surprisingly peaceful. Sarah got out of the car and looked around her while the doctor helped Mrs Brown to get out. It would be nice to live in such a spot, she thought, only a few miles from the hospital, but as far removed from it as if they were upon another planet.
The doctor unlocked the front door with its gleaming knocker and beautiful fanlight and stood aside for them to go in. The hall was a great deal larger than she had thought from the outside, and was square with a polished floor and some lovely rugs. There was a satin-striped wallpaper upon which were a great many pictures, and the furniture was, she thought, early Regency—probably Sheraton. The baize door at the back of the hall opened and a woman came towards them. She was tall and bony and middle-aged, with dark brown eyes and pepper-and-salt hair; she had the nicest smile Sarah had seen for a long time. The doctor shut the door and said easily:
‘Ah, there you are, Alice.’ He glanced at Sarah and said, ‘This is my good friend and housekeeper, Alice Miller. Alice, this is Sister Dunn from the hospital, and this is Mrs Brown, of whom I told you, and Timmy.’ He threw his gloves on to a marble-topped wall table. ‘Supposing you take Mrs Brown with you and show her where Timmy will live, and discuss his diet?’
Sarah watched the two women disappear through the door to the kitchen and looked rather shyly at Dr van Elven.
‘Come and see the splendid view from the sitting room,’ he invited, and led the way to one of the doors opening into the hall. The room was at the back of the house, and from its window there was indeed an excellent view of the river with a stretch of green beyond. It was almost country, and the illusion was heightened by the small garden, which was a mass of primulas and daffodils and grape hyacinths backed by trees and shrubs. There was a white-painted table and several chairs in one corner, sheltered by a box hedge; it would be pleasant to sit there on a summer morning. She said so, and he replied, ‘It is indeed. I breakfast there when it’s fine, for it is difficult for me to get out of doors at all on a busy day.’