by Betty Neels
In the small sitting room, an hour later, studying the city’s map with Eileen, deciding where they should go the following day, Cordelia hoped that their tea party had been a good augury for future relations between uncle and niece, and me too, she added silently.
Wishful thinking; he was, if anything, more remote than ever at dinner that evening. True, he sustained a conversation in a vague way and answered his niece when she addressed him but Cordelia had the feeling that they were quite superfluous to his entertainment. It was a relief when the meal was finished and politely refusing coffee, she was able to usher Eileen up to her bed and then go along to her room.
They saw very little of the doctor during the next two days, he joined them at breakfast but as on the first occasion, beyond wishing them good morning and bidding them a brief goodbye, he had nothing to say, plainly he preferred to occupy himself at that meal with his correspondence. At lunch he was rather more forthcoming, asking where they had been and where they intended to spend their afternoon, and dinner in the evening was very much the same as lunch. It was on the third morning that he surprised Cordelia by pausing on his way from the breakfast table to ask her if she would be good enough to join him in his study when she had finished her own meal.
He was sitting at his desk writing when she knocked and went in. He got up and pulled a chair forward for her and then sat down again.
‘I imagine that Eileen is sufficiently settled to start lessons of some sort?’ He asked, barely giving her a glance or a chance to nod her head: ‘There is an art class at the school close by, opposite the church of the Scots, a few minutes walk from here. This afternoon at three o’clock. I believe it lasts for an hour. And tomorrow morning she will attend a needlework class at nine o’clock. I have arranged for her to have German lessons three times a week, I presume you are capable of helping her with any homework she may have to do?’
Cordelia nodded again, and spoke quickly before he could say anything more. ‘That’s all a bit dull for a twelve-year-old,’ she pointed out forthrightly. She ignored the lift of his heavy eyebrows. ‘How about some gym or tennis; she’d meet some girls of her own age…?’
‘And be taken off your hands, Miss Gibson?’ His voice was silky.
She reddened up to the roots of her hair. She said in her quiet voice which only shook a little with anger. ‘I’m sorry you think that, Dr Trescombe. I am aware that Eileen and I interfere with your life, but it isn’t for long. I’ve tried to work out a daily routine which will keep us out of your way as far as possible, but Eileen is a lively girl and normally quite noisy as well as rather spoilt, but she’s a dear child too, and she didn’t ask to come here.’
‘Plain speaking, Miss Gibson. You must forgive me; as I have said before I have very little to do with children. My world is largely of books and reading.’
She looked at him with pity; still young, handsome enough for any woman to look at him twice, apparently successful and by no means poor. It seemed to her a wicked waste… She looked quickly away because he was staring at her in enquiry. After a moment he said: ‘I’ll arrange for gym classes and see about tennis. You play yourself?’
Colour stole into her cheeks again. ‘Yes, but not for a long time. Besides I have no racket and—and no clothes. I shall enjoy watching her; she can use up some of her energy.’
‘You will also take her to the museums and churches. On Sunday I will take her to the Spanish Riding School, and you might visit the Belvedere Palace Gardens and I suppose she will want to go to the shops. Keep to those in Karntner Strasse and the Graben please. I think it might be a good idea if you were to put your suggestions for any outing on this desk from day to day. Have you sufficient money?’
‘No,’ said Cordelia baldly. ‘I gave Lady Trescombe the change from the money I had to take Eileen out.’
He nodded. ‘I will advance you a sum for expenses, be good enough to tell me when you need more. Oh, and your wages? Paid weekly, I understand.’
It made her sound like a Victorian servant. She said stiffly: ‘Lady Trescombe paid me each Saturday morning.’
He pulled a pile of papers towards him and picked up a pen. ‘Very well, Miss Gibson. I think that is all, thank you.’
She, usually mild tempered and patient, longed to speak her mind; he was as dull as his books and there was absolutely no need for it. He needed a good shaking up; Eileen’s idea of finding a beautiful woman to dangle under his uncaring nose wasn’t so silly. She went out of the room without a word.
Eileen was waiting for her. ‘Well, what was all that about?’ she wanted to know.
‘Let’s go across to the Rathaus Park, we can sit there and talk.’
It was still early in the morning and the streets weren’t busy although the traffic was heavy as they crossed the Ring. But the park was almost empty. They found a seat in the sun and Cordelia passed on as much of the doctor’s wishes as she deemed suitable and when Eileen, inevitably, complained bitterly, she stressed the pleasures of the tennis and the various outings she had planned. ‘The Vienna Woods,’ she coaxed, ‘and the Schonbrunn Palace, it’s huge and the gardens are quite super. Besides your mother and father will expect you to see as much as possible, and I thought it rather a splendid idea for you to have German lessons; you can try out what you learn in the shops and it’ll be a lovely surprise—only five weeks.’ She added cunningly, ‘You’ll have to work hard—we can do your homework together, I need to brush up my German too.’
Eileen hunched her shoulders. ‘Oh, all right, if you say so. But I don’t want to play tennis with a lot of stuffy girls.’
‘Well yes I can understand that, but you ought to give it a try or you won’t know if they are stuffy or not will you?’ She stood up. ‘There’s a nice little café over there, let’s go and have coffee or lemonade or something. Did you bring your paints with you?’
Cordelia began to walk across the park. ‘The school’s quite near here; while you’re at your class, I’ll look at a church or two. Tomorrow after your class we might walk to the Graben and look at the shops.’
‘What will we do when we’ve had coffee?’
‘We’re going to take a look at the Museum of Fine Arts,’ said Cordelia firmly.
To her surprise they slid into quite a pleasant routine; the art classes weren’t so bad, conceded Eileen, and she had begun on a work bag in typical Austrian style for her mother, and tennis, provided Cordelia sat at the side of the court and watched, was bearable. Cordelia heaved a sigh of relief, exchanged polite small talk with the doctor when they happened to meet which was only during meals anyway and being a methodical girl crossed off the various museums as they visited them.
Of course it wasn’t all museums; the doctor had been as good as his word and taken them both to the Spanish Riding School on Sunday morning and they had sat entranced, watching the magnificent horses with their riders in their strange hats and uniform, dancing and trotting and gavotting round the ring. Dr Trescombe, who had seen it all before, found it far more entertaining to watch his niece’s small, excited face and Cordelia’s eyes, wide with delight, darting here and there and everywhere. Not so plain, he decided, studying the long curling lashes and the pale hair pinned so neatly. A lot of hair; he wondered just how long it was and what it would look like unpinned and then frowned at the thought, and when she turned to ask him something, answered her with the cool politeness she was beginning to dislike. After lunch, he took Eileen out to meet some friends of his and Cordelia, with time on her hands and not knowing what to do with it, armed herself with her guide book and found her way to the church of the Minor Friars where she sat quietly, watching the constant coming and going of people through its doors. It made her feel less lonely.
In these surroundings it would have been easy to give way to self pity, instead she totted up all the advantages of her job; money—more than she had had for a long time, splendid food and a handsome apartment to live in. A chance to see something of the world at no expense to
herself and she hoped, her feet firmly on the first step towards an independent life of her own. Not bad, she told herself bracingly and walked back to the apartment, getting lost on the way.
Thompson opened the door to her as the doctor came from the drawing-room into the hall, and she paused uncertainly as she saw him. She was a little flurried because just for a while she had had no idea where she was despite the guide book and she looked at him uncertainly. All she wanted was a cup of tea and somewhere to sit and if he were to ask her in his chilly way where she had been she might possibly scream…
For all his austere manner, Dr Trescombe was no fool. He said at once, ‘Ah, there you are Miss Gibson—I was about to ask Mrs Thompson to send in tea—Eileen and I are parched and I daresay you are too.’
He looked over her shoulder at Thompson. ‘So tea, Thompson, if you please, and cucumber sandwiches and some of Mrs Thompson’s apple cake.’
Thompson, well aware that both the doctor and his niece only just had returned from having tea with a minor consulate official, went off smartly to the kitchen with a poker face. ‘Never known him like it,’ he observed to his wife, ‘putting himself out and no mistake, not but what Miss Gibson’s a very nice young lady, wouldn’t hurt a fly and so kind and thoughtful.’
In the hall Cordelia still hesitated, ‘I’ll be down in a minute,’ she told him and went up the steps and along the corridor leaving him to return to Eileen.
‘Miss Gibson’s just come in, she’s hot and tired and we’re going to have tea—never mind that we’ve just had it, we’re going to have it again…’
Eileen stared at him frankly. ‘You know, Uncle Charles, I think you’re rather nice after all. I bet Cordelia’s been roaming around feeling lonely, though she’d rather die than say so. She’s very proud. She’s got almost no clothes and she’s always doing little sums in a note book but she’d be angry—no, not angry, just sort of disappear into herself, if I said anything. I know because I’ve tried.’
Her uncle was on the point of replying to this when Cordelia came in, instead he said kindly, ‘Sit down, Miss Gibson, it’s almost too hot to be out. I miss a garden, don’t you? Did you find somewhere cool while you were out?’
‘Well, yes, a little church…’ she described it briefly, afraid of boring him and then asked politely if they had had a pleasant afternoon.
‘Heavenly,’ cried Eileen, chipping in, ‘and we had strawberries…’
‘The friends we visited have a garden,’ interrupted the doctor smoothly, ‘they have a villa at Grinzing, one of the fashionable areas in which to live. We must drive out that way one evening.’
Mrs Thompson with a small conspiratorial smile at the doctor, put the tea tray on the handsome sofa table between the windows and Cordelia, bidden by the doctor to do so, poured out. The tea, what Mrs Thompson described privately as a good cuppa, was fragrant in the delicate china cups and the sandwiches were paper thin. Cordelia took a bite and closed her eyes for a second.
‘Of what are you thinking?’ asked the doctor.
She gave him a clear look. ‘That heaven is a cucumber sandwich,’ she told him seriously.
His bellow of laughter quite shook her. Suddenly he looked quite different; younger, ready to be amused. It was a great pity that at that very moment Thompson should come in to say that there was an urgent ‘phone call for him from the hospital. He went away with a muttered word of apology and didn’t come back.
He hadn’t returned by dinner time, and Cordelia and Eileen, after an evening spent puzzling over the complicated embroidery she had chosen to do, ate without him. And after another hour making plans for the following day, Eileen agreed to go to bed.
‘He’s fun,’ she confided to Cordelia, ‘you wouldn’t know that, would you? I mean he’s always got his nose in a book or something, but this afternoon he played rounders—those people we went to see have five children—just imagine—and their mother and father played too, and we had a huge tea…’ She stopped. ‘Oh Lord, that was a secret…’
‘Why?’ asked Cordelia, and knew before she was told.
‘Well, you looked kind of lonely and unhappy this afternoon and I think Uncle Charles felt sorry for you, so he pretended we were just going to have tea so that you could have it too.’
‘How very thoughtful of him,’ observed Cordelia, if her voice was wooden Eileen didn’t notice.
‘You won’t tell him that I told you?’ she asked anxiously.
‘No, of course not. I’m glad that you had such a super afternoon. You see it’s more fun than you had expected, isn’t it?’
Eileen was tugging on her pyjamas and her voice was muffled. ‘Oh, yes. But not for you Cordelia—I mean you don’t meet anyone do you? Only me and Thompson and Mrs Thompson and Uncle Charles. And you hardly see him at all…’
Cordelia saw him that very evening. With Eileen safely in bed and the doctor from home, it was a good chance to go to the little panelled room lined with bookshelves and choose a book. She had been given carte blanche to take anything she wanted from the shelves, but somehow she had never got around to it, but now, with the best part of the evening to fill in before bedtime, she would curl up by her open bedroom window and read.
There was a splendid collection; she browsed for ten minutes or so and decided on Jane Eyre; she knew it very nearly by heart, but it would divert her thoughts; she wasn’t quite sure why she wanted them diverted or from what, but Jane Eyre would do the trick, she felt sure.
She was crossing the hall when the doctor let himself in and she paused to wish him good evening: ‘I’ve borrowed a book—you did say…’
He nodded impatiently. ‘Yes, yes, of course. You are surely not going to bed—it’s barely nine o’clock.’
‘Well, not exactly go to bed.’ She explained, ‘I thought I would read…’
‘In your room?’ he sounded surprised.
‘Well, yes…’
‘Did I not make myself clear that you might use any rooms excepting my study?’
‘No, you didn’t,’ she smiled at him kindly, ‘but it doesn’t matter—I’m sure you’re a very busy man with a great deal to occupy your mind.’
He had shut the door behind him and put his case on a chair. ‘Perhaps you would join me when I have a cup of coffee, Miss Gibson, I’ve had rather a trying evening.’
‘Certainly, shall I get Thompson to fetch it? And where would you like it?’
‘In the drawing room, I think,’ and as Thompson appeared from the kitchen end of the hall, ‘We would like coffee, please Thompson and perhaps some sandwiches.’
He swept Cordelia before him and she found herself sitting in a small chair by the window while the doctor wandered around the room with his hands in his pockets. He said suddenly, ‘I shall be glad to get home—I find this apartment oppressive, although it’s convenient for the hospital.’
‘Will you be here much longer?’
‘No, I return within a few days of Eileen’s parents arriving here. They will go on almost immediately to Scotland, presumably you will go with them.’
‘I have no idea.’
‘You have other plans? Another job to go to?’
‘No—no, I haven’t, but I expect I can get one easily enough once I’m back in London.’
‘You can, of course, return to your family.’ It was a statement more than a question, and since she didn’t want him to ask any more questions, she said, ‘Of course,’ and turned with relief to Thompson, bearing a massive tray with coffee and sandwiches.
The doctor sat down after she had given him his coffee and sandwiches. He ate most of them and she asked, ‘You had no dinner this evening?’
‘Dinner? No—there was a difficult case—there was no time…’
‘I’ll get some more sandwiches, you must be hungry.’
She went to the door with the empty plate. ‘Buttered toast with just a touch of Gentlemen’s Relish and more ham sandwiches?’
She was on her way to the kitchen befor
e he could answer.
Mrs Thompson was sitting at the table drinking tea while Thompson cleaned shoes, in the corner of the kitchen.
‘The doctor’s had no dinner,’ said Cordelia urgently, ‘and he’s eaten all the sandwiches. I wondered if some toast…and some more sandwiches?’
Mrs Thompson beamed at her. ‘You go back, Miss, my husband shall bring them along in a minute or two.’
The doctor ate everything that Thompson brought presently, but then, as Cordelia reminded herself he was a big man and there was a lot of him to nourish. She drank a second cup of coffee, listening with a sympathetic ear to some highly technical talk on the doctor’s part. Finally, with the coffee pot empty and all the food eaten, he sat back at his ease.
‘I must apologise for boring you, Miss Gibson.’
‘I wasn’t bored. I found it all very interesting, I had no idea that anaesthetics could be so complicated.’ She put the cups and saucers tidily on the tray and got up. ‘It was kind of you to invite me to coffee, thank-you, Dr Trescombe. I’ll say good night.’
She got up and he got up with her. ‘It is I who should thank you, Miss Gibson.’ He held the door for her and as she went past him: ‘Eileen calls you Cordelia, may I do the same?’
She paused to look up at him. ‘Of course you can, Dr Trescombe,’ she smiled widely. ‘Miss Gibson is so unsuitable, isn’t it?’
‘Unsuitable?’
‘Well, yes. The Gibson girls were noted for their beauty, weren’t they?’
She slipped away, up the stairs and whisked along the corridor to her room. Probably he had forgotten that he had called her a nonentity with no looks to speak of, but if he had happened to remember, then she had given him something to think about.