by Betty Neels
The professor’s mouth twitched at its corners. ‘Yes, but I must refuse her kind offer, I have to get back as soon as possible.’
She was surprised to feel disappointment. ‘Oh, well—I’ll walk with you to the house.’
‘No need. I will tell your mother you are back—ten minutes?’
‘Yes, and many thanks for the offer of a lift. It—it was kind of you to think of it.’
He said gravely, ‘Occasionally I give way to these generous impulses. Till Friday.’
She watched him walk away. Even from the back he looked distinguished.
Friday came too soon as the last day of a holiday always does. Julia went for a last early morning ride, groomed Star and Jane, ate the lunch her mother had been at such pains to cook for her, and went away to pack and get herself dressed. An hour later she descended, looking quite different in a knitted jacket and skirt and a tucked silk blouse, all in a soft grey which did full justice to her hair, now very neatly coiled at the back of her head. She hadn’t bothered overmuch with make-up while she had been at home, but now she had done her face with great care.
‘Smashing,’ declared her mother. ‘You’re wearing the Gucci shoes.’
‘Well, I thought I might as well.’ The whole outfit looked what her mother called vogue-ish and she said so, carefully not betraying her interest in her daughter’s reasons for taking such pains. Mrs Mitchell, who had taken to the professor and had a strong romantic streak, wondered what complications lay ahead.
‘I’m sure the professor will have a cup of tea,’ she observed comfortably. ‘I’ve made some cress sandwiches, and there’s that chocolate cake you made yesterday.’
Professor van der Wagema, when he came, professed himself delighted to stay for tea. He had greeted his hostess with a charm which started off the romantic thoughts once more, said hullo in a casual way to Julia and went to shake Mr Mitchell by the hand, that gentleman having just come in from his school visits.
Tea was a pleasant meal but they didn’t linger over it. They were at the door saying their goodbyes when Mrs Mitchell asked, ‘When will you be home again, darling?’
Julia was deliberately vague. ‘I’m not sure, Mother—I’ll give you a ring—it won’t be for a couple of weeks, anyway.’ She gave her parent a final kiss and got into the Rolls, feeling for once that she was dressed in a style befitting its subdued luxury. The professor put her case in the boot, Wellington in his basket on the back seat, and then got in beside her.
‘You don’t mind getting back early?’ He wanted to know as he took the road to Salisbury. ‘I’ve a date this evening and I must get home to change.’
That horrible girl, thought Julia and said airily, ‘It suits me very well: Nigel’s free this evening and we’ll have an hour or two together.’
This wasn’t really true and she didn’t know when he was free but she didn’t suppose that her companion knew either and bringing him into the conversation put, she considered, the professor nicely in his place. She felt quite pleased with herself for having been so ready with an answer and the professor, well aware that Mr Longman was on duty until midnight, saw no reason to disabuse her. He glanced sideways at her. ‘You look quite different out of uniform, Julia.’ His voice was pleasant and rather cool and she answered him just as coolly.
‘Do I? I expect we all do—nurses you know.’
They were through Salisbury before she broke the silence. ‘How is Nicholas?’
‘Happy. He’s enjoying his extra lessons. And he’s got into the house rugger team.’
‘Oh, good for him. Jason and Gregory are in different houses, of course, but Jason’s in the school team and Greg’s in his house team this term.’
‘A common talking point if the three of them should ever meet,’ commented the professor.
They didn’t at any time talk much and not a word about the ward or St Anne’s. It was already dusk turning rapidly to dark by the time he drew up outside the flat. Julia thanked him for her lift and put out a hand to open the door. His hand came down over hers. ‘I’ll bring up your case,’ he told her, ‘and stay where you are.’
He got out and opened her door, fetched Wellington’s basket, ushered her on to the pavement and fetched her case.
‘There’s no need,’ protested Julia. ‘You’ll be too late for your date.’
‘Time enough.’ He sounded casual as he opened the shabby street door and followed her upstairs.
The flat looked poky when she opened her door. She went straight to the window and opened it, letting in much-needed air redolent of petrol fumes and the fish and chip shop on the corner.
‘Oh dear.’ She smiled at him ruefully, ‘after all that fresh air and lovely silence. I’ll have to get used to it again…’
‘Not for long, perhaps. The country around Bristol is quite charming and rural.’
She said wistfully, ‘But we shall have to live in a flat attached to the hospital. It’ll be more convenient.’
He had put down her case and closed the door and when she opened Wellington’s basket he got out at once and went sniffing round the room. ‘He’s looking for Gyp,’ said Julia, ‘they formed a lasting friendship.’
She looked uncertainly at the professor, looming there in the middle of the room. ‘Don’t let me keep you, you’ve been most kind and I am grateful.’
He stared back at her. ‘Has it struck you that the tone of our conversation has altered during the past few weeks? So polite, almost if I might say so, friendly. We must do our best to correct that, mustn’t we? Our years of cut and thrust have become a habit, haven’t they?’
She kept her eyes on him. She didn’t think that he was serious, but one could never tell. She said cautiously, ‘If you say so, Professor.’
She sidled to the door, ready to usher him out. ‘Ah, speed the parting guest,’ observed the professor in what she always thought of as his nasty voice.
She returned kindly, ‘Oh, no—I was thinking of your date.’
He took the door handle from her, towering over her and leaving precious little room for the pair of them in the doorway. He said softly, ‘I hope that you dressed yourself to kill on my account, Julia,’ and bent and kissed her. He was half way down the first flight of stairs before she could get her breath and then it was only a squeak.
CHAPTER FIVE
WITHIN HALFAN HOUR of being back on the ward the next morning, it was as if Julia had never been away; most of the patients were still there. Medical patients were much slower to recover than those in the surgical wards, but there were half-a-dozen new faces to be smiled at and talked to, their charts examined and their notes carefully read.
Mrs Collins had gone, rather to her surprise and when she asked Pat about her, her staff nurse said eagerly, ‘Oh, Sister such a piece of luck, her niece heard from someone she knew who wanted help in the house—not housework, mind you—mending and polishing silver and that kind of thing, just right for Mrs Collins, she was offered a bed-sitting room and promised that she should see her doctor regularly. Wasn’t that super? Heaven knows what would have happened to the old dear… The niece simply couldn’t have her, she decided—it would have meant a geriatric ward for ever and ever.’
‘What a mercy this turned up, then. I wonder who it was? I must find out. Did the social worker know about it? I mean the details?’
Pat nodded, ‘Oh, yes! She said she’d see you when you got back.’ She added, ‘As a matter of fact, she’s on holiday for a week.’
‘Oh, lord that means we’ll have that beady eyed Miss Trump doing her work. I’ll wait until she’s back. Now let’s get through these notes…’
The day was long but busy and at the end of it, she had the evening with Nigel. They went back to the flat and she cooked supper for them both while he described a tricky splenectomy he’d done that afternoon. Over their coffee he asked, ‘Did you have a good journey back?’
‘A nice easy one. Professor van der Wagema gave me a lift, he’d been to see h
is son.’
‘It must have been early in the evening—he came in to see a patient just before midnight, all rigged out in a black tie. One of the housemen saw him in his car during the week with a smashing blonde.’
He didn’t wait for Julia’s answer. ‘I’m going home in a couple of weeks’ time—Saturday and come back Sunday evening—coming with me?’
Julia thrust the picture of the professor and the ravishing blonde to the back of her mind. ‘I’d love to. Give me the dates sometime, will you, so that I can fit in with Pat. It’s her weekend but I know she wants days off in the middle of the week. Couldn’t be better.’
When Nigel had gone she washed up and got ready for bed. She wasn’t keen to spend the weekend with his family, but common sense told her that since she was going to be their daughter-in-law in the not too distant future, she had better start getting to know them better. The matter occupied her thoughts until she was in bed, with Wellington purring beside her, but the last thing she thought of, funnily enough, before she slept was Professor van der Wagema and the fair beauty.
‘I only hope she is kind to Nicholas,’ she observed to Wellington as she closed her eyes.
She didn’t meet the professor again until three days later, when he came to do his customary ward round. She saw at once that he was in one of his austere moods; coldly polite with his: ‘Sister Mitchell this and Sister Mitchell that.’ With his patients he was—as she had to admit—kind and sympathetic, showing no sign of impatience with the more garrulous ladies and taking time to instil some of his own assurance into Mrs Thorpe who was making no progress at all. And afterwards in her office while they drank their coffee, he confined the conversation to his patients, talking for the most part to Dick Reed. She found it hard, almost impossible to believe that this was the man who had kissed her only a few days ago. Of course, he had meant nothing by it; she was no green girl to believe otherwise, all the same, did he have to be very formal with her? Perhaps he felt awkward, she had had a few qualms about meeting him but she was a sensible woman and didn’t allow them to become serious, so why should he have any? He put out a hand without looking at her and she put a pen into it. As he bent to sign the form Dick had given him she had time to look at him. He was undoubtedly good looking and very distinguished. There was a sprinkling of grey in his dark hair and she thought how unfair it was that a man approaching forty-two could still attract admiring glances from the girls, while a woman of thirty worried herself sick at the mere thought of being thirty-one. He looked up suddenly and caught her eyes upon him. They stared at each other for a few seconds while the colour crept slowly into her cheeks. He smiled then before turning to Dick to query something. It gave her cheeks the chance to cool while she reflected in a muddled way that it was a good thing that Nigel was free that evening and would be coming round to the flat for supper.
Not a successful evening, as it turned out. Nigel had had a bad day and it took him a long time to get it off his chest and by the time she had offered sympathy and they had had supper the evening was over. He could have stayed later of course, but he didn’t want to; she kissed him good night with extra warmth but he didn’t respond, only reminded her that he had a heavy list in the morning and she mustn’t expect to see him.
Indeed she saw very little of him for the next week or ten days although they had met for long enough to arrange to go to his parents on the following weekend. And the weekend after that, she remembered forlornly, he would be leaving for Bristol.
She had gone home just for a day and wished for longer there to enjoy the autumn countryside and was overjoyed to find that Pat didn’t want the weekend due to her, which meant that Julia could have the weekend that Nigel was due to leave for Bristol. She had told him that, and waited to see if he would ask her to go with him, but since he didn’t she would go home; it would make their parting less painful.
But they still had their weekend together with his parents. They drove down early on the Saturday morning leaving dull cloudy weather behind them and arriving at his home in bright sunshine.
Mr and Mrs Longman greeted her pleasantly but without warmth; she wasn’t sure why they didn’t welcome her into the family; after all, she would soon be a member of it. They were always meticulously polite, thoughtful of her comfort but she was always a guest, never one of them. She handed Mrs Longman the flowers she had brought with her, offered a cheek to Mr Longman and following Nigel went indoors.
The main topic of conversation of course, was Nigel’s new job although they weren’t particularly interested in her and Nigel’s future together. A flat, they said, how nice, you can set up house later, but of course there’s no hurry, Nigel must get himself established first; Julia had a good job, hadn’t she? And they could meet whenever they could arrange weekends… Julia agreed, because she could see it wouldn’t help matters if she did otherwise. Later, perhaps, she would be able to get Nigel on his own and make a few definite plans.
Easier said than done—family friends came after dinner that evening and on Sunday morning they all went to church before sitting down to Sunday lunch, a leisurely meal. Julia’s hopes for a walk with Nigel afterwards were shattered by his mother’s insistence that Julia should be shown a family photo album, the contents of which were explained in great detail to her, so that by the time they had reached its end, it was time for tea. And after tea they were to drive back to London.
In the car at last, Julia heaved a quiet sigh; at least they had an hour or two in each other’s company. She began at once, wasting no time, ‘Nigel—your mother and father—they do know that we want to get married? Sometimes it would appear to me that they don’t take it seriously; I feel that I don’t belong…’
‘My dear girl—after all, they don’t know you very well, do they? I mean, you’ve been home, what—half a dozen times. I’m sure that they like you but it’ll take them a little while to accept you. Once I’m at Bristol you must try and visit them more often.’
He dismissed the whole thing with a good-natured laugh. ‘You want too much from people, Julia, you can’t expect everything to be just as you want it. You must come down again in a few weeks and you can all come over and see me at the hospital; I might even manage a couple of days off…’
‘That will be nice,’ observed Julia quietly. Only her eyes betrayed her disappointment, unease, and unhappiness, and it was too dark for anyone to see their green glitter.
It was an uneasy week, not helped in the least by a sudden influx of patients, ill enough to keep her busy while she was on duty and too tired when she got off to think very much about her own affairs. Nigel was busy too, which meant that they only had two evenings together, and even their final dinner before he left St Anne’s had to be shelved at the last moment because of a run of emergencies in theatre with which he had to deal.
By Friday evening Julia was miserably unhappy, with luck Nigel might manage half an hour with her when he had finished in the theatre, too late for her to cook supper for the pair of them and far too late to have the dinner they had planned at their favourite restaurant. It would have to be a drink and something in a basket at the nearest pub, not the most romantic of places in which to bid each other a temporary goodbye. All the same, she went back to the flat, saw to Wellington’s supper, packed an overnight bag ready to leave the next morning for home, and changed into a pretty dress. She looked every day of her thirty years, she decided, studying her tired face in the mirror, and proceeded to make it up with extra care. She took pains with her hair too and found a pair of low-heeled shoes so that her tired feet wouldn’t ache.
They had just sent down the last case; the night porter, just come on duty, obligingly told her and ten minutes later Nigel joined her in the entrance hall. ‘Lord, what a way to finish,’ he began ruefully, ‘I’m glad I’ve a couple of days’ peace and quiet at home before I start at Bristol.’
Julia agreed with him although the thought crossed her mind that they could have spent the weekend together onl
y he didn’t seem to have thought about that. They walked the short distance to the ‘Mug and Thistle’ and sat, she with a glass of wine, he with a pint of old and mild, a plate of sandwiches between them. It would be closing time in less than an hour and Julia, listening to him describing the tricky perforation he had dealt with that evening, wondered unhappily if that was all they were to talk about. After all, they wouldn’t be seeing each other for some time and even if they were seldom together at St Anne’s, at least they were under the same roof. Then she said abruptly, ‘I shall miss you, Nigel.’
He stopped abruptly in mid-sentence, frowning: ‘Darling, you aren’t listening, I was describing this appendix…’
‘Well, will you miss me?’ persisted Julia.
‘Of course I shall, what a silly question. But don’t expect a lot of letters darling; I’ll give you a ring whenever I can—you’d better not ring me until I give you a number…’ He smiled at her. ‘I’m damned lucky to get this job, Julia—it’s a real stroke of luck.’
She exerted herself to be cheerful and interested. After all, Bristol wasn’t all that far away and they would be able to fix their holidays together, even weekends. Only she was going to be lonely and she longed to tell him that, but how could she when she suspected that he wasn’t going to be lonely himself? He might love her but she wasn’t the be all and end all of everything for him; she would be there, in the background, waiting for him when he was ready to settle down, but he wasn’t the man to fling everything to the four winds of heaven for love of her. She doubted if there were such a man.
They walked back to the hospital presently and bade each other goodbye. A totally unsatisfactory exercise from Julia’s point of view. She walked quickly back to the flat, feeling let down and miserable again. It had been a beastly week, she reflected, putting the key in her door and stooping to scoop up Wellington for a cuddle. The ward had been busy, which would account for her feeling so sorry for herself and over and above that, Professor van der Wagema had been at his most aloof and prickly. There had been no pleasing him and she had been hard put to it to pre-sent her usual serene front before his intent dark gaze.