by Betty Neels
Aunt Martha drew up with a flourish before the door and they all went inside. It was a little shabby but not poorly so; the furniture was old and well cared for and even if the curtains and carpets were rather faded, there was some nice Georgian silver on the sideboard in the dining room. Phoebe, now wide awake, helped bring in the cases and then went upstairs to change into slacks and shirt before joining Aunt Martha in the kitchen for coffee, regaling that lady with the latest hospital news as they drank it, but when Sybil joined them, the talk, naturally enough, centred around her and her success. It wasn’t for a few minutes that Phoebe came to the conclusion that it was she and their aunt who were excited about the results and not Sybil herself. She wondered uneasily why this was and whether it had something to do with whatever it was Sybil was going to tell her. Prompted by this thought, she asked:
‘Shall we go for a walk after lunch, Syb?’ and the uneasiness grew at the almost guilty look her sister gave her as she agreed.
They went to their favourite haunt—a copse well away from the road, with a clearing near its edge where a fallen tree caught the spring sun. They squatted comfortably on it and Phoebe said: ‘Now, Sybil, let’s have it. Is it something to do with St Elmer’s or about your exams?’
Her sister didn’t look at her. ‘No—no, of course not—at least … Phoebe, I’m giving in my notice at the end of the week.’
Phoebe felt the uneasiness she had been trying to ignore stir, but all she said was: ‘Why, love?’
‘I’m going to get married.’
The uneasiness exploded like a bomb inside her. ‘Yes, dear? Who to?’
‘Nick Trent, he’s the Medical Registrar. He’s landed a marvellous job at that new hospital in Southampton. We’re going to marry in two months’ time —he gets a flat with the job and there’s no reason for us to wait.’
‘No, of course not, darling. What a wonderful surprise—I’m still getting over it.’ Phoebe’s voice was warm but bewildered. They had discussed the future quite often during the past six months or so and Sybil had never so much as hinted … They both went out a good deal, she had even mentioned Jack in a vague way, but she had always taken it for granted that the two of them would share a year together, perhaps in some post abroad. Sybil had known that, just as she had known that Phoebe had stayed at St Gideon’s, waiting for her to finish her training. She asked in a voice which betrayed none of these thoughts: ‘What’s he like, your Nick?’
‘I knew you’d be on my side, darling Phoebe.’ Sybil told her at some length about Nick and added: ‘He wanted to meet you and Aunt Martha. I thought we might fix a weekend—your next nights off, perhaps.’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘He’s got a car—we could all come down together.’
Phoebe smiled. ‘Nice—I shall be able to snore on the back seat,’ and then, quietly: ‘There’s something else, isn’t there, Syb?’
‘Oh, Phoebe darling, yes, and I don’t know what to do unless you’ll help me. You see, a few weeks ago I was chosen to take a job in Holland …’
Phoebe had her head bowed over the tree-trunk, watching a spider at work. She said placidly: ‘Yes, dear—go on.’
‘Well, it’s some scheme or other cooked up between St Elmer’s and some hospital or other in Delft—there’s a professor type who specialises in fibrocystitis—he’s over here doing some research with old Professor Forbes, and the scheme is for a nurse from Delft to come over here and me to go there for two months. But first I’m supposed to go to the hospital where he’s working—you know that children’s hospital where they’ve got a special wing—the idea being that I shall be so used to his ways that it won’t matter where I work. I thought it would be fun and I said I would, and then Nick … we want to get married.’
‘Of course, but you could get married afterwards, dear. It would only be a few months—not long.’
Her young sister gave her a smouldering glance. ‘Yes, it is,’ she declared. ‘I won’t!’
‘Well, tell your people at hospital that it’s all off.’
‘I can’t—all the papers and things are signed and the hospital in Delft has made all the arrangements. Phoebe, will you go instead of me?’
‘Will I what?’ uttered Phoebe in a shocked voice.
‘Go instead of me.’
‘How can I possibly? It couldn’t be done—it’s absurd—they’d find out.’
‘You know you’re dying to leave and get off night duty and try something else for a change. Well, here’s your chance.’
‘But I’m not you.’
‘Near enough, no one need know. No one’s ever seen us at the children’s hospital, nor in Delft, have they? Even if they had, we’re so alike.’
‘I thought you said the Dutch doctor had seen you?’
‘Pooh, him—he looked half asleep; I don’t think he even looked at me, and we were only together for a couple of minutes, and I hardly spoke.’ She added persuasively: ‘Do, darling Phoebe! It sounds mad, doesn’t it? but no one’s being harmed and it’s not really so silly. And don’t worry about the man, I doubt if he even noticed that I was a girl.’ She sounded scornful.
‘He sounds ghastly—I suppose he speaks English?’
‘So well that you know he’s not,’ explained her sister, ‘and he’s got those vague good manners …’
‘I’ll not do it,’ said Phoebe, and was horrified when Sybil burst into tears.
‘Oh, dear,’ she wailed through her sobs, ‘now I don’t know what I’ll do at least, I do. I shall run away and hide until Nick goes to Southampton and we’ll get married in one of those pokey register offices and n-no one will come to the w-wedding!’
Phoebe sat watching her sister’s lovely face. Even while she cried she was beautiful and very appealing and she loved her dearly besides, she had promised her father that she would look after her. She said now: ‘Don’t cry, love —I’ll do it. I think it’s crazy and I’m not sure that if I’m caught I shan’t get sent to prison, but it’s only for a couple of months and if you don’t go someone else will, so it might as well be me. Only promise me that you’ll have a proper wedding, the sort Mother and Father would have liked you to have. And are you sure about Nick? I mean really sure —it’s for the rest of your life.’
Sybil smiled at her through her tears. ‘Oh, Phoebe, I’m sure—I can’t explain, but when you love someone like I love Nick, you’ll know. You’re a darling! We’ll fix it all up while we’re here, shall we? Just you and me—Nick doesn’t know, I was so excited and happy I forgot to tell him and when I thought about it later I couldn’t. And Aunt Martha …’
‘We won’t tell anyone at all,’ said Phoebe. Now that she was resigned to the madcap scheme she found herself positively enjoying the prospect of a change of scene. ‘I’m quite mad to do it, of course. Now begin at the beginning and tell me exactly what it’s all about. Are you sure this doctor didn’t get a good look at you?’
‘Him? Lord, no, Phoebe. I told you, he’s the sleepy kind, eyes half shut—I should think that half the time he forgets where he is. You’ll be able to twist him round your little finger.’
‘What’s his name?’
Sybil looked vague. ‘I can’t remember. I’ll find out for you, and the name of the hospital and where he lives and anything else I’m supposed to know.’
‘Which reminds me—I don’t know an awful lot about fibrocystic disease—hasn’t it got another name?’
‘Mucoviscidosis, and you can forget it. The treatment hasn’t changed much in the last year or so and you know quite enough about it—I remember telling me about several cases you had on the Children’s Unit …’
‘Three years ago,’ murmured Phoebe.
‘Yes, well … I’ll bring you up to date, and what does it matter anyway, for the whole idea is that I—you should be seconded to this hospital so that you can learn all about this man’s new ideas.’
‘And afterwards? Am I supposed to go back to St Elmer’s and spread the good news a
round?—then we are in the apple cart.’
‘No, nothing like that. I’m free to do what I like when I come back from Holland. As far as St Elmer’s goes, they think I’m giving in my notice so’s I can get a job somewhere else when I get back to England.’
‘My passport,’ hazarded Phoebe suddenly. ‘Supposing this man sees it? Or don’t we travel together when we go?’
‘Oh, yes, that’s all been arranged, but remember the British and the non-British split up when they get to the Customs. Anyway, he’s hardly likely to breathe over your shoulder, he’s not that sort.’
‘He sounds a dead bore,’ Phoebe said slowly. ‘I’m not sure …’
‘You promised—besides, there are bound to be other people around—housemen and so forth.’ She paused. ‘I say, there’s nothing serious between you and Jack, is there?’
Phoebe shook her head and said thoughtfully: ‘And if there was, this is just what’s needed to speed things up—I can’t quite make up my mind …’
‘Then don’t,’ said Sybil swiftly. ‘Phoebe love, if it were the real thing, you wouldn’t even stop to think—you’d know.’ She grinned and got up. ‘You see, this is just what you need, away from it all you’ll have time to decide.’
Phoebe got to her feet. ‘Perhaps you’re right, love. Now tell me, you and your Nick, when do you want to get married?’
They spent the rest of their walk happily discussing wedding plans and clothes. Phoebe had a little money saved, but Sybil none at all.
‘Well, that doesn’t matter,’ declared Phoebe. ‘There’s enough to buy you some decent clothes and pay for the wedding,’ and when Sybil protested: ‘I’m not likely to marry first, am I?’ she wanted to know soberly, and then broke off to exclaim: ‘Look—three magpies, they must have been eavesdropping. What is it now? One for anger, two for mirth, three for a wedding …’
They giggled happily and walked home arm-in-arm.
* * *
By the time Phoebe returned to St Gideon’s from her nights off, she and Sybil had their plans laid, the first step of which was for her to resign immediately. It would work out very well, they had discovered; she would be due nights off before she left, time to go home, explain to Aunt Martha that she had taken a job with this Dutch doctor and would be going to Holland, collect the uniform Sybil’s hospital were allowing her to keep until she returned to England, and make her way to the children’s hospital, where, according to Sybil, she was expected. The one important point to remember was that for the time being, she was Sybil and not Phoebe.
She went to the office to resign on the morning after her return, to the utter amazement of the Chief Nursing Officer. She was a nice woman, interested in her staff and anxious to know what Phoebe intended to do—something, of course, which Phoebe was unable to tell her, for most of the big hospitals knew each other’s business and probably the exchange scheme at St Elmer’s was already common property. Miss Bates would hear sooner or later via the hospital grapevine, that Sybil had left to get married, probably she already knew that she had been seconded for the scheme, she wasn’t above putting two and two together and making five.
‘I haven’t quite decided,’ Phoebe told her, playing safe. ‘I think I shall have a month or two’s holiday at home.’
If Miss Bates considered this a curious statement from a member of her staff whom she knew for a fact depended upon her job for her bread and butter, she forbore from saying so. She thought Phoebe a nice girl, clever and remarkably beautiful. She hoped that she would marry, because she deserved something better than living out her life between hospital walls. Miss Bates was aware, just as the rest of the hospital, that the Medical Registrar fancied Night Sister Brook, but she was an astute woman, she thought that the affair was lukewarm and Sister Brook, despite her calm disposition, was not a lukewarm person. She sighed to herself, assured Phoebe that she would always be glad to see her back on the staff should she change her mind, and hoped that she would enjoy her holiday.
Phoebe didn’t see Jack during her first night’s duty; he had gone on a few days’ leave and wouldn’t be back for two more days—something for which she was thankful, for it seemed a good idea to let the hospital know that she was leaving first. The news would filter through to him when he got back and he would have time to get used to the idea before they encountered each other, as they were bound to do.
They met over the bed of a young girl three nights later—an overdose and ill; there was no time to say anything to each other, for the patient took all their attention, and when he left, almost an hour later, he gave her some instructions to pass on to the nurses, and walked away. Ten minutes later Phoebe left the ward herself. She had done her first round, thank heaven, so she could spare ten minutes for a cup of coffee. She opened the door of her office at the same time as the junior nurse on the ward arrived with the tray and she took it from her with a word of thanks, noting with a sinking heart that there were two cups on it—presumably Jack intended to have a cup with her. She pushed the door open and found him inside, standing by the desk, glowering.
He said at once; ‘I’m told you’re leaving. Rather sudden, isn’t it?’
Phoebe sat down, poured coffee for them both and opened the biscuit tin before she answered him. ‘Yes, Jack. I—I made up my mind while I was on nights off. Sybil’s leaving too.’
He looked slightly mollified. ‘Oh—you’re off together somewhere, I suppose. For how long?’
‘No—I’ve decided to have a little holiday, staying with relatives.’ The idea had just that minute popped into her head and she hated lying to him, but after all, it wasn’t his business. ‘I feel unsettled.’
He stirred his coffee endlessly, looking at it intently. ‘Yes, well, I suppose if you feel you must—I shall miss you, Phoebe, but I daresay you’ll be ready to come back by the time I decide to marry. I shall ask you then.’ He glanced up briefly. ‘Everything has to be just as I want it first.’
That jarred. Was she not important enough to him—more important—than the set pattern he had laid out for them both, and without first finding out if she wanted it that way? She could see it all—the engagement when he was suitably qualified and had his feet on the first rung of the consultant’s ladder, the wedding, the suitable home, suitably furnished, all the things that any girl would want, so why did she feel so rebellious?
It was all too tepid, she decided. It would be nice to be swept off her feet, to be so madly loved that the more mundane things of life didn’t matter, to rush off to the nearest church without thought of the right sort of wedding. She passed him the sugar and sipped her coffee. If Nick could marry Sybil on his registrar’s pay and find it wonderful, why couldn’t Jack feel the same way? She began to understand a little of what Sybil had meant about loving someone, and she knew at that moment that she would never love Jack—like him, yes, even be fond of him, but that wasn’t at all the same thing.
She said quietly: ‘Jack, I can’t stop you doing that, but I don’t think it’s going to be any use.’ She stared at him over the rim of her mug, her lovely eyes troubled.
‘I’ll be the best judge of that,’ he told her a shade pompously, ‘and until then I prefer not to discuss it.’
He was as good as his word; they discussed the patient they had just left until, with a huffy good night, he went away.
She should mind, Phoebe told herself when she was alone. She had closed the door on a settled future, and just for a moment she was a little scared; she was twenty-seven, not very young any more, and although she could have married half a dozen times in the last few years, that was of no consolation to her now. She sighed and pulled the bed state towards her. It seemed likely that she was going to be an old maid.
CHAPTER TWO
A MONTH later, on her way to Magdalen Provost, St Gideon’s behind her, the doubtful future before her, Phoebe reflected that everything had gone very well—there had been no snags, no one had wanted to know anything, no awkward questions had been asked.
Sybil had already left and was at home making plans for her wedding to Nick, whom Phoebe considered to be all that could be desired as a brother-in-law. Sybil was going to be happy; now that she had met him Phoebe had to admit that in Sybil’s place, she would have done exactly as she had done. Even Aunt Martha had accepted everything calmly—she had liked Nick too, had been generous in her offers of help to the bride, and was entering into the pleasurable excitement of a wedding in the family with a great deal more zest than Phoebe had supposed she would. And as for her own future, when she had told her aunt what she intended doing, without bringing Sybil’s part into it at all, the older lady had wholly endorsed her plans.
‘It’s high time you had a change,’ she stated approvingly, ‘it sounds a most interesting scheme and you’ll enjoy a change of scene. What did Jack have to say?’
Phoebe had told her rather worriedly and added: ‘I feel guilty, Aunt, but honestly, I didn’t let him think that I … I don’t think I encouraged him at all; we just sort of liked being together.’
‘Well, my dear,’ her aunt had said briskly, ‘there’s a good deal more to being in love than liking each other’s company, and I’m sure you know that. Have you been able to convince him, or does he still think you might change your mind?’