by Betty Neels
He went and opened the door for her and as she went past him, put out a hand and caught her gently by the arm. ‘Good night, Cordelia,’ his voice was gentle…so was the kiss he gave her.
‘Oh,’ said Cordelia for the third time and scooted across the hall and up the steps and along the corridor to her room, she heard the doctor laughing softly as she closed the door, and what with that and tiredness and a delayed fright at the evenings happenings, she began to cry. She cried steadily while she undressed, showered and went to peep at Eileen. She was still weeping when she fell asleep.
The remembrance of her tears annoyed her very much when she woke up in the morning. As a consequence she was very brisk and cheerful when she went to see how Eileen fared. That young lady took one look at her and wanted to know why she had been crying, which, considering Cordelia had taken a good deal of time in making up her face, was vexing.
She decided to ignore the question and embarked instead on a breezy account of the Prater Park which lasted nicely until the pair of them went downstairs for breakfast.
It being Sunday, there was no post, which meant that the doctor was able to devote all his attention to them. He wished them good morning, hoped that they had slept well, and recommended the scrambled eggs.
‘Cordelia’s been crying,’ said Eileen in a clear voice not to be ignored.
The doctor shot a quick glance at Cordelia, busy with the coffee pot and pink in the face, moreover he saw that her hands were shaking. Possibly with rage, he thought with secret amusement.
‘I’m not surprised,’ he answered, ‘when we got back last night, we found a wounded man and she had to hold the torch while I had a look at him. Not a pretty sight and very upsetting to the nerves.’
‘Cordelia, darling, you didn’t tell me, how awful for you. Was there a lot of blood?’ She turned to her uncle. ‘Is he dead?’
‘Blood thirsty child. No, he’s not. Who is coming to church this morning?’
Cordelia looked up eagerly but said nothing and he went on, ‘The Schottenkirche—it’s close by, we can walk there, the three of us.’
‘I don’t want…’ began Eileen.
‘No church, no Schonbrunn.’
‘Fair enough,’ agreed Cordelia, ‘you can sit quietly if you get tired, Eileen. Besides it’s one of the places we haven’t been to yet and there’s only a little time left now.’ She had spoken briskly but inside her, she felt sadness welling up to choke her. She ignored it, to be sorry for herself wouldn’t help at all; she would go back with Eileen and stay with her until she was no longer needed and then get another, similar job. Beyond that she wasn’t going to think.
That night, lying in bed wide awake and quite unable to sleep, she reviewed the day. Something to remember and most of it delightful. Church, under the guidance of the doctor had been interesting and lunch together had been a decidedly chatty meal, with Eileen hogging the major share of the conversation, asking endless questions and showing an intelligence which her uncle was quick to meet.
They got to Schonbrunn before two o’clock and had gone at once to the Coach Museum, where they had spent the greater part of the afternoon, goggling over the earlier coaches, equipped, for the twenty-six day trips to Paris, with what must have been the equivalent of all mod cons, and admiring the tiny coaches used by the young Habsburgs and the hunting sleigh with its swivel chair, space for servants to ride back and front and reindeer horns to support the guns. But it was the Coronation coach which took up most of their time, with its gold trimmings. ‘Eight white horses,’ marvelled Cordelia, reading the descriptive leaflet.
‘I’d rather have Uncle Charles’s car,’ said Eileen.
They had ices before wandering past the long rows of linden trees and into the formal gardens and here presently, true to his promise, the doctor sat down with his niece and Cordelia was free to climb leisurely to the Gloriette where she stood and admired the view, wishing that the doctor was there to share it with her. Presently, she walked back again and since none of them fancied visiting the zoo, and the afternoon was almost over, they had got back into the car and had tea at Sacher’s Coffee House. It was crowded and the doctor seemed to be on terms with any number of people there. Cordelia was conscious of curious looks and when from time to time someone stopped at their table, she was introduced austerely as Miss Gibson. The doctor had good manners, but she had the feeling that he would much rather not have done so. She had acknowledged each introduction with a cool, correct, German greeting and made no effort to take part in the conversation. Probably he had felt ashamed of her, she thought miserably, she was so dreadfully mediocre, both as to face and dress. Eileen on the other hand, took pains to draw attention to herself, trying out her greatly improved German and laughing a lot. In five years time, mused Cordelia, the child will be a menace, with young men vying for her attention. Perhaps she should try and explain to the child that drawing attention to herself wasn’t quite the thing…
They were on the point of leaving the café when the woman she had seen at the apartment paused at the table. Her greeting was effusive although she ignored both Eileen and her, something which the doctor had put right immediately. ‘My niece, Eileen, and Miss Gibson, her governess.’ He spoke in German and the woman replied in the same language.
‘My dear Charles, still saddled with your two unwelcome visitors.’ She gave a tinkling laugh and the doctor frowned.
‘Miss Gibson speaks excellent German,’ he said drily, ‘and Eileen has made great strides since she has been here. Perhaps you had better apologise, Maria.’
She said sharply, ‘I’ll do no such thing. A governess and a child…’
She made them sound like something the cat had brought in, thought Cordelia and caught Eileen’s eye and winked.
‘My guests,’ the doctor reminded her and when she tossed her head and pouted, wished her a cold goodbye. She paused for a moment, looking at him, her lovely face full of temper, then she turned on her heel.
‘Sorry about that,’ said the doctor, ‘I’ll apologise for her…’
‘Are we unwelcome visitors?’ asked Eileen.
He lifted a finger for the bill. ‘I admit that when you came I was quite convinced that you disrupt my ordered life. But I can promise you that you have done nothing of the kind, on the contrary you have grown on me—I shall miss you abominably.’
‘Just me, or both of us, Uncle Charles?’
He had glanced at Cordelia, sitting, prim and upright across the table. ‘Both of you. Will you miss me, Eileen?’
‘Oh, yes, you’re ever so much nicer than I thought you’d be, in fact I like you very much now. So does Cordelia.’ She caught Cordelia’s outraged look: ‘Well, she hasn’t actually said so, but if you ask her I’m sure she’ll say so…’
‘I think,’ said the doctor smoothly, ‘that I won’t chance my luck—not at this moment. Now who’s for home? I’ve got to look in on a patient before eight o’clock—I’ll drop you off as I go to the hospital.’
‘But it’s only six o’clock,’ complained Eileen.
‘It will be half-past six by the time I’m there and I’m going out this evening.’
‘Who with?’
‘That will do, Eileen,’ said Cordelia sharply, ‘you’re being rude. You’ve had a lovely day; don’t let’s spoil it with peevishness.’
Eileen had given an exaggerated sigh. ‘Oh, darling Cordelia, you’re being a governess again. I bet you wish it was you.’
Cordelia had shot a look at the doctor; he was sitting back in his chair, most annoyingly being amused.
‘That’s such a silly remark, I shan’t answer it,’ she said.
Eileen put an impertinent head on one side. ‘You’re quite pretty when you’re cross, Cordelia.’
‘Come along—you are keeping your uncle waiting.’
‘I am a patient man, quite prepared to wait for what I want, Eileen, be good enough to apologise to Cordelia—you have been rather rude, you know.’
Eileen had smiled widely. ‘I’m sorry, darling Cordelia, truly I am.’ She turned enquiring eyes on to her uncle. ‘Why is it rude to say true things, Uncle Charles?’
‘It so often causes acute embarrassment to those who are listening,’ he told her idly.
Cordelia, going over every word, wondered for the tenth time, just what he had meant. That he was embarrassed? Not likely at all, he must have meant herself and if he had it had been rather an unkind remark…
She had managed to keep out of his way for the rest of the evening, waiting until he had left the house before she went to the dining room for her supper, after seeing Eileen safely into bed with her own meal on a tray.
Cordelia settling herself on her pillows, thought that it had been a lovely day except for the last bit. There were four more days before Eileen’s parents arrived, but she wasn’t likely to see much of the doctor before then. And a good thing too, she reminded herself firmly. ‘Out of sight, out of mind,’ and all the rest of it. She was just dropping off when she remembered another proverb: Absence makes the heart grow fonder.
CHAPTER SEVEN
CORDELIA WOKE to the distant rumble of thunder and when she went to look out of the window it was to see the blue sky overhead rapidly disappearing beyond thick greenish clouds, tearing across the sky. She flinched at a great jagged streak of lightning and withdrew her head smartly as the thunder pealed again. It was barely six o’clock and the street below was quiet, so that the silence after the thunder was uncanny, broken almost at once by Eileen’s voice.
Cordelia bundled on her dressing gown and went through the bathroom to Eileen’s room, to find her sitting up in bed, looking awfully scared. She said at once, ‘I hate thunderstorms, they frighten me…’
It hardly seemed the time to confess that she didn’t like thunderstorms either, Cordelia arranged her features into what she hoped was a calm carefree expression. ‘Nothing to worry about, love,’ she declared airily, ‘I doubt if it will come any nearer.’
The brilliant flash of lightning, followed immediately by thunder fit to burst her eardrums, belied her words. She jumped visibly and went to pull the curtains close and turn on the light. It went out almost at once and the next flash sent Eileen under the bedclothes with an earpiercing scream.
Cordelia advanced to the window and pulled the curtains back again, rather in the manner of one expecting to be bitten by them; since there was no light, it would be better to leave them drawn back, at least they would be able to see in the Stygian darkness. The next flash took her breath so that all she could do was utter soothing sounds as she got on to the bed beside the humped figure in it and flung a comforting arm round what she guessed might be Eileen’s shoulders.
The flashes were coming thick and fast now and the thunder was continuous, the sky was dark and lowering and gave the room an eerie light, so that when the door slowly opened, Cordelia, was quite unprepared to suppress a scared squeak.
The doctor came in, put his torch down on the bed table and observed softly: ‘Scared stiff? It won’t last long.’ He eyed the heap on the bed. ‘That’s Eileen, is it?’ and as another brilliant flash lit up the room and Cordelia jumped. ‘Why don’t you join her?’
Cordelia, overjoyed to see him and nonetheless vexed at his facetious remark, found her voice. ‘I’m not in the least nervous’, she lied.
His low laugh was, she considered, positively offensive.
He came over to the bed and bent over his hidden niece. ‘Come on out’, he begged her, ‘if you sit round the other way, you won’t see the lightning and the thunder is only noise after all. Look at Cordelia, as cool as a cucumber.’
Cordelia cast him a speaking glance; if being a cucumber meant ice cold with fright, shivers up her spine and an icy feeling in her insides, then she was a cucumber. His grin did nothing to help, and since she was almost scared out of her wits, to burst into tears would have been a great relief. Beastly man, she fumed, loving him fiercely and at the same time disliking him intensely. The beastly man leaning across, took her hand and held it and it’s comforting clasp suddenly made her fright quite unimportant. She saw then that he was fully dressed; not his usual elegant grey suit and spotless white shirt, but slacks and a thin sweater. She said: ‘You’re up early…’ She looked at his face then; it was lined and grey with tiredness and he badly needed a shave. ‘You haven’t been to bed.’
He smiled. ‘No—there was a bad road accident and the theatre’s been going all night.’ He wasn’t going to talk about it; he gave his niece an affectionate tweak and said, ‘How about all of us creeping to the kitchen and making a pot of tea; the storm is almost over.’
It was exactly what Eileen and Cordelia for that matter, needed to take their minds off the storm. The three of them went soft footed to the kitchen; the warmth and familiarity of which made Cordelia feel far more at ease, and while she made the tea, the others found biscuits and sugar and milk and with the blind securely pulled down against the lightning and the powerful lights on, they sat round the massive table while the doctor told them amusing titbits about the lighter side of his work until Cordelia realized that the thunder was rumbling itself away into the distance.
She collected cups tidily, sat the table to rights, and suggested that Eileen went back to her bed. ‘It’s seven o’clock. I’ll ask Mrs Thompson to keep your breakfast until nine and I’ll bring it up to you.’ She paused on their way to the door and put an urgent hand on the doctor’s arm.
‘And you’ll go to bed, Doctor. When do you have to be at the hospital?’
He answered her gravely although he looked as if he wanted to laugh. ‘Theatre starts at ten o’clock I’m anaesthetising…’
She answered at once: ‘Then you can sleep till nine o’clock. You must, you know, or you won’t be able to cope.’
He didn’t argue. He said meekly: ‘Very well, Cordelia,’ and she nodded her satisfaction; it was Eileen who darted a surprised look at him, but for once she had nothing to say, walking across the kitchen to stroke the kitchen cat, sleeping in a chair by the stove. It gave the doctor the opportunity to bend his head and kiss Cordelia on her surprised mouth.
As she settled back in bed, Cordelia reasoned with herself; the doctor had had no reason to kiss her; he could, of course, have been too tired to know what he was doing, it could have been a gesture of thanks because he was at last going to his bed. There was no point in brooding over it, she told herself with her usual common sense and went away to shower and dress. To go back to bed would be silly now, she could hear the Thompson’s up and about and she would have to see Mrs Thompson about Eileen’s breakfast and ask Thompson to call the doctor. She remembered then that he hadn’t said anything about ‘phoning the hospital; did they expect him before ten o’clock? Did he have ward rounds, she wondered, or consultations? Not only had she no idea of his private life, she knew nothing of his work. It was like living with a clam, she thought crossly, going off to discuss her problem with Thompson.
He set her mind at rest at once. The doctor, he informed her civilly, went to the hospital at eight o’clock on four mornings of the week, on the fifth—that very day, he had no need to go until ten o’clock. Indeed, said Thompson, the doctor could very well ‘phone and say that someone else must go to the theatre that morning, seeing that he had been up for almost all of the night, but that wasn’t the doctor’s way. ‘I’ve known him go without sleep for twenty four hours or more, miss—them bomb outrages it was, and the theatre at the London Royal going non-stop—nasty cases they were too, but as you may know, the giving of an anaesthetic is a skilled business, as skilled as the surgeon’s.’ He eyed her tired face. ‘You go along to the sitting room, Miss and I’ll bring you your breakfast; plenty of time for you to have yours before Miss Eileen wakes—so a nice strong cup of tea…’
She drank her tea and ate her breakfast while she thought about the doctor. She dearly wanted to know everything about him, but so far, all she knew were the few crumbs of information from Thom
pson. Charles Trescombe wasn’t a man to talk about himself and anyway, he would hardly pour out his life’s history to the governess. She collected the post from the hall table and slit the envelopes and arranged them neatly by his place at table. Then put the waste paper basket on the exact spot where he was in the habit of casting his discarded correspondence. By then it was time to take a tray up to Eileen, whom she found curled up like a dormouse, sound asleep. She set the tray down, drew the curtains back and roused the child. Eileen woke at once, thankfully in splendid spirits; she had forgotten her fright of the storm although the excitement of it gave her plenty to talk about while she ate her breakfast. ‘Wasn’t it fun?’ she declared. ‘With Uncle Charles here and going to the kitchen…’ she giggled, ‘I said he was fun, and he is, isn’t he?’
Cordelia murmured in a neutral kind of way; if she agreed Eileen was quite capable of telling him that she had and making her look a fool. She led the conversation away from him and enquired what Eileen would like to do. ‘There aren’t many days left,’ she warned, ‘I know we’ve been almost everywhere, but is there something you want to see?’
‘Shops’, said Eileen, her mouth full. ‘Cordelia, I need another pair of sandals—the ones with laces, they’re all the fashion and I’m so out of date…’
‘Have you any money?’
‘Oh, yes, Uncle Charles gave me some yesterday. We’ll get the sandals and I’ll buy you an ice.’
For a twelve-year-old, Eileen was very grown up. Cordelia wondered, if she had a daughter, if she would like her to be quite so adult about everything. She thought not, although Eileen was a dear child. But the question didn’t arise; she wasn’t likely to have a daughter, nor for that matter a husband.