by Betty Neels
‘Oh, yes.’ She took comfort from his smile.
‘How did you know where I was?’ she asked.
‘I telephoned your uncle. Someone—your aunt?—told me what had happened. They were not very forthcoming, so I drove down and saw Emma.’ He caught her questioning look. ‘Very early in the morning, before anyone was about. She told me where you were.’
‘You went to a lot of trouble.’ She studied his quiet face.
‘Your uncle was my friend. I’m going to take you back now.’ His eyes searched her face. ‘You’re all right?’
She nodded. ‘I’m very grateful—just to talk…’
He nodded and smiled, the kind smile which changed his rather austere face.
He saw her into the hospital, lifted his hand in casual farewell and drove away, leaving her deflated. She remembered as she undressed that she hadn’t asked him why he was bothering about her. Perhaps he felt an obligation towards Uncle Thomas. In which case, she thought sleepily, I must make it clear that he need not be. I’m quite able to look after myself.
She was far too busy with the old ladies to give herself any thought at all. The sad state of affairs they were in couldn’t last for ever, she comforted herself, as, gamely seconded by Mrs Dougall, she plunged into yet another day’s work. She was tired and she had a dull headache and everything took twice as long as it should have done; from the other side of the bed they were making Mrs Dougall said flatly, ‘You’ve got the ’flu Staff Nurse.’
‘I’m a bit tired, that’s all. I think we’re over the worst of it; another week and we’ll be back to normal, hopefully. If only we had more nurses…’
Her headache got worse as the day wore on. She had gone off duty for a couple of hours in the afternoon while the part-time staff took over, and she had slept heavily, waking unrefreshed. Filling in the Kardex, waiting for the night staff, she decided not to go to supper; Panadol and bed made more sense.
She felt worse in the morning but there was nothing for it but to go on duty; there would be only three of them—herself, Mrs Dougall and another nursing auxiliary. She had just finished taking the report from the night nurse when Mrs Dougall answered the phone.
‘You’re wanted in the office, Staff,’ she said, and added sotto voce, ‘and don’t let her flatten you.’ She cast an anxious eye over Tilly’s white face. ‘You don’t look fit to be here—it’s a crying shame.’
Tilly went carefully out of the ward and down the stairs, holding her head very carefully still because it ached so atrociously. At the office door she took a deep breath, knocked and went in.
The Principal Nursing Officer wasn’t there; there was a stout balding man sitting at her desk and beside him a thin man with a clever face. Standing a little apart was Dr van Kempler.
He stepped forward, took the door handle from her and shut the door, and offered her a chair, but he didn’t speak. It was the man behind the desk who addressed her.
‘Staff Nurse Groves, we owe you both an apology and an explanation.’ He paused and looked carefully at her. ‘You are very pale—that is no wonder. I must tell you on behalf of the whole hospital committee that we are very distressed to have been made aware of the situation here. It will be put right immediately. We have already arranged for agency nurses to supplement the staff; the Principal Nursing Officer has—er—gone on extended sick leave. I may say that we are happy to have secured the services of a most capable lady in her place. Things will be put right as soon as possible. I am told that you were dismissed—quite unfairly. We shall be only too happy to retain your services; you can rest assured that you will have no further fault to find with the administration.’
He had a sonorous voice; it went through Tilly’s throbbing head like a sledgehammer. She caught a word here and there and when she looked at him he was all fuzzy round the edges. She frowned in her efforts to understand what he was saying. And what was Dr van Kempler doing, standing there? She turned her head to look at him and winced with pain. Perhaps if she shut her eyes for a minute…
Dimly she heard Dr van Kempler speak. ‘’Flu, and I’m not surprised. I’ll take her home. I think you can take it from me that she won’t be coming back.’ He nodded at the thin man. ‘Thanks for all the help, Dick.’
‘Only too glad to have helped. And our thanks for bringing this state of affairs to light, Rauwerd. Keep in touch…’
Dr van Kempler nodded again, scooped Matilda up as though she had been a bundle of straw, and carried her, apparently without effort, through the hall and out of the entrance. The surprised porter who had opened the door followed him outside and opened the car door as well. The doctor arranged Matilda tidily in the front seat. ‘Will you see someone about packing up Miss Groves’s things and sending them to my house?’ He scribbled in his notebook. ‘Here is the address. Thanks.’ A coin or two changed hands. ‘As soon as possible.’
Matilda collected her wool-gathering wits. ‘Nurses’ home,’ she muttered urgently, and then, remembering her manners, ‘So sorry…’
The doctor didn’t answer that but got into the car and drove off, away from the hospital, leaving the dull streets behind and finally stopping in a narrow elegant street close to Grosvenor Square. His house was the end one of a terrace, a small Regency cottage with spotless paintwork and shining windows. Its handsome front door opened as he drew up and Emma came down the steps.
‘Have you got Miss Matilda there, sir?’ she asked anxiously. ‘Is she all right?’
He got out without haste. ‘She’s here, Emma. She has ’flu—she must go straight to bed. Is the room ready?’
‘Oh, yes.’ Emma trotted round the car and peered in at Matilda, who gazed back at her in a bemused way. Really, the strangest things were happening. It was a pity that she couldn’t be bothered to think about them.
‘Emma,’ she said, ‘why are you here and where am I?’
‘Don’t talk now,’ advised the doctor, and since he sounded a little testy, she didn’t. In any case, it was too much effort.
Thinking about it afterwards, she was vague as to what had happened. She was aware of Emma fussing round her, of being carried upstairs and of another elderly face peering down at her and voices talking quietly. She wasn’t sure who got her into bed, only that its cool comfort was bliss. Someone gave her a drink, offered pills and then more drink and told her to go to sleep.
When she woke, the dull day was dwindling into dusk and her headache was bearable. She turned her head just to make sure and saw the doctor; he was sitting near her bed. He had a folder of papers on his knees and was writing, but he looked up as she moved and got up and came over to the bed.
‘Feeling a little better?’ And, when she nodded, ‘No, don’t talk—time enough to do that later. Emma will freshen you up and give you a drink and you’ll go to sleep again.’ He poured some water from the carafe on the table beside the bed. ‘Take these now.’
She felt hot and cross, and when he left the room tears of tiredness and temper trickled down her cheeks. Emma, bearing a tray on which was a jug of lemonade, properly made from her own recipe, wiped her cheeks for her, washed her face and hands, then combed her hair and coaxed her to drink.
‘There, there, my lamb, you’ll feel better in the morning. Just you close your eyes now.’
‘That’s all very well,’ said Matilda peevishly, ‘but why are you here, Emma, and where are we?’
‘Why, the doctor fetched me, sensible man that he is, and this is his house. Now do go to sleep, Miss Tilly.’
‘I don’t want to,’ said Tilly a little wildly, ‘not until someone’s explained.’
Her hand was taken in a firm cool grasp. ‘You have a high temperature,’ said Dr van Kempler, sounding exactly like a doctor should when dealing with a recalcitrant patient. ‘You will go to sleep now; tomorrow you will feel more yourself and you may ask all the questions you wish.’
He didn’t let go of her hand, but sat down on the bed. ‘I shall stay here until you are asleep,’ he
observed calmly.
‘Oh, well, in that case,’ mumbled Matilda and closed her eyes.
Incredibly, it was morning when she woke again. She lifted her head cautiously from the pillow and found her headache a mere echo of what it had been. She sat up in bed and looked around her. Emma was asleep in a big armchair, wrapped in a dressing-gown and with a blanket tucked around her. There was a small table by her with a shaded reading lamp on it; by its light and the glimmer of light around the curtains, Matilda inspected the room. It was of a fair size and very elegantly furnished with Regency period pieces, the curtains were old-rose watered silk with swathed pelmets and the bedspread matched them. Eaten up with curiosity, Matilda got rather gingerly out of bed. A peep from the window might give her some clue as to where she was. She crept across the carpeted floor and twitched the curtains very gently aside. It was still very early but the sky was clear and there was the promise of sun before long. She looked down on to a small garden, having high walls and paved round a small ornamental pool; there were flower beds around it and neatly trimmed grass. She studied it all slowly and craned her neck to see directly below the window, to encounter the doctor’s up-turned face.
It gave her quite a shock. She got back into bed, feeling guilty, and wondered about him. He had been in a thick sweater and slacks and there had been a dog with him, a very large and woolly German Shepherd dog, who had looked at her with the same intentness as his master.
It was a good thing that Emma woke up then, enquired anxiously how she felt and bustled away to get tea, waving aside Matilda’s pleas to be told where she was and why. ‘You’ll be told soon enough, now you’re better, love,’ said Emma, pulling back curtains and folding a blanket.
She closed her eyes the better to think and then opened them at the gentle tap on the door. The doctor came to the bed and picked up her arm and took her pulse and remarked pleasantly, ‘You’re better.’
‘That’s a very large dog,’ said Matilda.
‘Dickens. We had just returned from our morning walk.’ The blue eyes studied her. ‘You are, of course, dying of curiosity.’
‘Yes, oh yes, I am. How did I get here and where am I anyway, and how did Emma get here and how did you know…’
He smiled slowly. ‘You are better, aren’t you?’ He got up from where he had been sitting on the edge of the bed and took Emma’s tray from her as she came through the door. ‘If we perhaps have our tea together while I answer your questions?’
He glanced at Emma, who smiled at him and said, ‘I’ll get dressed, doctor, if it’s all the same to you.’
He poured their tea, put another pillow behind Matilda and offered her a cup. ‘Emma has been a splendid source of information,’ he told her, ‘but I’m sure she could not know the whole, I hope that you will tell me exactly what has happened. But you have questions of your own.’
She was feeling herself better with every passing minute. ‘Where am I?’
‘At my house.’ He added the address. ‘I brought you here yesterday morning. Your things came yesterday afternoon; Emma has unpacked them.’
‘But there was no need for that. It was very kind of you to look after me, but I’m quite able to go back to the nurses’ home.’
‘But you are not going back,’ said Dr van Kempler baldly. ‘You will remain here.’
She gaped at him. ‘Stay here? Of course I shan’t—I must get back on duty.’ She frowned suddenly. ‘Oh, I was sacked, wasn’t I? I’d forgotten.’ She finished her tea. ‘Those men in the office with you. I didn’t feel very well; I’m not sure what they were talking about.’
‘They were offering you an apology and an explanation, Matilda. It seems that no one had realised that the Principal Nursing Officer was on the verge of a nervous breakdown and quite unfit for her task.’
‘How did you know?’
He shrugged. ‘I made it my business to find out. I told you that I knew someone on the hospital committee.’
‘Emma—how on earth did Emma get here?’
‘I fetched her and she won’t be going back.’
‘You fetched her? But didn’t Herbert object?’
The doctor’s smile came and went. ‘Er, yes, he did. But of course he had no say in the matter.’
Matilda looked at him sitting there. He really was vast; she quite saw that Herbert wouldn’t have stood a chance. His blustering would have gone unheeded and the sheer size of the doctor would have reduced him to reluctant agreement.
‘Emma’s pleased,’ she said.
‘I understand so.’ He poured more tea and she took the cup, frowning while he watched her.
‘But where will she go? And you said I wasn’t going back to the hospital. Where am I going?’
‘Ah, yes. Well, supposing we discuss that presently. I think that now you must have your breakfast and sleep again for a while. You may get up after lunch if you feel like it, but I must warn you that you are going to feel off colour for a few days.’ He put down his cup and saucer. ‘I must change and go to the hospital.’
‘Which one?’
He mentioned a famous teaching hospital and she said, puzzled, ‘But Uncle Thomas said you lived in Holland?’
‘I do, but I frequently work over here. When you are better I’d like to hear about your uncle.’
He picked up the tray and went to the door. ‘Do as Emma tells you,’ he warned and he left her.
She ate her breakfast presently and, although she had no intention of doing so, went sound asleep until Emma came back with a light lunch.
‘Now I’ll get up—I may, you know.’
‘Yes, love. Just for a jiffy while I make your bed.’
‘I’ll stay up for tea,’ said Matilda and walked on cotton-wool legs to the chair. It was barely a dozen steps away but she was absurdly glad to sit in it. When teatime came she was only too glad to get back into her bed.
It was a quiet house and the traffic in the street was infrequent. Once or twice she heard Dickens bark and twice footsteps going past her door. She drank her tea, took the pills Emma offered and went to sleep again.
She woke to find the doctor’s face looming above her. A tide of self-pity engulfed her and for no reason at all she burst into tears.
He sat down on the bed and gathered her close, waiting patiently until she had sniffed and choked herself to a standstill, offered her a handkerchief, shook up her pillows and settled her against them.
Matilda drew a few shuddering breaths, aware that although she felt ill she no longer felt depressed. She pushed a cloud of hair away from her pale, red-eyed face and said in a watery voice, ‘I’m sorry. I can’t think why I did that. I’m quite all right now.’
‘I did warn you,’ he said cheerfully, ‘but of course no one ever listens to the doctor in his own house.’ He took his sopping handkerchief from her grasp and got up. ‘I’m going to give you something to make you sleep soundly. Emma will bring you some soup presently and settle you for the night, and I promise you that in the morning you will feel almost your old self.’
‘I can get up?’
‘For an hour or so, but don’t get dressed. I’ll see you presently.’
He came back when she had eaten her soup and been washed and tidied to settle for the night. He watched her swallow the pills he gave her, wished her goodnight and went away again. She would have liked him to stay and talk, but he was in a dinner jacket ready to go out so she had said no more than goodnight. The pills were very effective; she had no time to do more than wonder where he was going and who with before she was asleep.
The doctor had been quite right; she felt quite her usual self when she woke in the morning, although she had the sense to know that if she got up and did too much she wouldn’t feel too good. Emma brought her her tea and a visitor as well, Mrs Cribbs, a small mouselike woman with a gentle voice: the doctor’s housekeeper.
‘Me and Cribbs are so pleased that you’re better, miss. You did have a nasty turn and no mistake.’
S
he slipped away, leaving Emma to explain that she and her husband ran the doctor’s house for him. ‘Not that he’s here all that much—a week here and there and sometimes only a couple of nights—but it’s handy for him to have a home to go to when he’s finished with his lectures and such.’
She trotted round the room, setting it to right. ‘In Vienna, ’e is, for a couple of days. Then back ’ere for a week before ’e goes back to Holland.’
Matilda sat up straight. ‘But Emma, we can’t stay here. He said we would discuss it and now he’s gone away.’
‘Yes, love, I was ter tell you that ’e’ll talk about it when ’e gets back and you’re not ter go out for a day or two, not until this east wind’s stopped blowing.’
‘He did, did he? He’s being very bossy. Emma, we could go to your sister at Southend.’
‘The wind’ll be worse there,’ said Emma. ‘Now you have a nice warm bath and I’ll bring up your breakfast.’
Matilda dressed after breakfast and went downstairs and was met by a portly middle-aged man who introduced himself as Cribbs, begged her to sit in the living-room and offered coffee. With the coffee came Mrs Cribbs. ‘Maybe you’d like to see over the house, miss? The doctor said I was to ask you, just so you will know your way around.’
So Matilda passed a pleasant hour being shown the dining-room, very elegantly furnished in the Chippendale style, the pretty living-room, all pinkybeige and chestnut-brown and flowers everywhere, and the kitchen at the back of the house, which was a good deal larger than she had expected. There was another room on the ground floor; Mrs Cribbs opened the door and allowed her to peep in—the doctor’s study, not to be entered unless invited. It was furnished with a large desk and a chair roomy enough to accommodate the doctor’s vast frame and its walls were lined with books. The desk was littered with papers and books and Matilda had a strong urge to tidy it.
Upstairs there were three large bedrooms, besides her own, as well as two bathrooms. The main bedroom was at the back of the house with a small balcony overlooking the garden and its own bathroom and dressing-room. It was a beautiful room, all pale pastel colours with rosewood furniture and swathed brocade pelmets above the windows. Matilda sank her feet into the soft pile of the carpet. ‘It looks ready to sleep in,’ she observed.