by Betty Neels
There had been flowers once more, their advent accounting for several hours of such high spirits on her part that the patients as well as her friends remarked upon them. Even the Major paused in his diatribe of the morning’s news to say: ‘And what’s happened to you, miss? You’ve had the face of an undertaker’s mute for the last two days and now you look like the cat that’s been at the cream!’
Victoria, her mind still full of the cellophane-wrapped spring flowers the porter had just delivered, beamed at him. ‘It’s such a lovely day.’
He put down The Times, took off his glasses and looked out of the window. ‘Raining,’ he declared. ‘You’re in love, young lady.’ He transferred his gaze to her face and to prevent herself from agreeing with him happily she said hastily: ‘Your pills, Major,’ and popped the spoon into his mouth, put a glass of water in his hands and sped on to the next patient who was far too ill to care a tinker’s cuss about her.
But Sister Crow noticed, remarking tartly that Victoria looked happy enough to be going to her own wedding; so did Jeremy Blake, who, on his way round the ward later in the morning with Sister Crow, paused to examine some X-rays Victoria had fetched for him. He held them up to the light and studied them with a rather pompous air, and without taking his eyes from them remarked to the Old Crow:
‘Our staff nurse is looking delighted with herself this morning, Sister. I fancy she must have good news.’ His pale eyes slid sideways to glance at Victoria. ‘Or perhaps flowers from the boy-friend.’
She returned his glance steadily, her pink cheeks very faintly pinker. He must have seen the flowers when the porter had brought them up to the ward or he might have been in the porter’s lodge when they were delivered. She thought it unlikely that he had seen where she had hidden them—in the linen cupboard, in an old-fashioned china jug Sister, for some reason best known to herself, insisted on keeping on the ward inventory.
She didn’t answer him and Sister Crow, who although stern and strict with her nurses, protected them like a mother hen with chicks from outside criticism, said:
‘That will do, Doctor Blake.’ She folded her arms across her trimly belted waist, the elbows aggressively cocked; she didn’t hold with chat on a ward round—only Sir Keith might indulge in conversation if he had a mind to. In her opinion, anyone else doing so was merely wasting precious time.
Doctor Blake shot her an annoyed look and said in quite a different voice:
‘I’ll examine this man. Get him ready, Sister.’
The elbows became a thought more aggressive. ‘If you wish to examine Mr Gibbs, Doctor, I will send a nurse to get him ready. There are none available at the moment—it is their coffee break, so you will have to wait.’ Her tone implied that as far as she was concerned, he could wait for ever. ‘In the meantime, perhaps you will write up Mr Bates for his Dactil—he’s still very uncomfortable.’
He really had no choice. Sister Crow, to give her her due, had had years of experience in managing house doctors—even RMOs…
Victoria took her flowers with her when she went to midday dinner, going first to her room to put them lovingly in her washbasin until she was free that evening to arrange them. After dinner she went as usual over to the Home for a quick cup of tea before going back on the ward. Kitty went too, and Bunny; they stopped in the doorway of her room, staring at the bouquet overflowing the basin, and then turned on Victoria.
‘Vicky, it’s Doctor van Schuylen again, isn’t it? He sent you the last lot—I do believe he fancies you.’ It was Bunny who spoke, following Victoria out of the room again to fill the kettle at the pantry sink and put it on the gas ring. ‘Is he coming back?’
Victoria turned the gas ring up high, opened the tiny fridge and got out the milk. ‘Yes, he’s coming back.’
‘And you’ve got a long weekend,’ persisted Bunny. ‘Are you going away together? Where to?’
Tilly had joined them. ‘Leave Vicky alone,’ she ordered. ‘She’ll tell us when she wants to, if she wants to.’
She turned off the gas and made the tea and they all walked back to Victoria’s room. It wasn’t until they were sitting with their shoes off on the bed that Victoria told them.
‘Well, I wasn’t going to say anything, and you’re not to blab—and it’s not a bit exciting really. I’m going home for the weekend and he’s got friends on Guernsey, so he’s offered me a lift there and back.’
‘Oh, Vicky,’ sighed Bunny, who was sentimental by nature, ‘how romantic! I expect you’ll go for long walks in the moonlight and he’ll propose.’
‘Stuff,’ said Victoria, who secretly hoped that he would do just that. ‘It’s just that we’re both going at the same time.’
Her two friends looked at her and forbore from comment. ‘Where is he now?’ Tilly wanted to know.
‘In Holland—he’s got a practice there.’
‘He gets around, doesn’t he? He’s something or other here too, isn’t he? and in great demand at these different seminars.’ She sighed. ‘I bet they have a lovely time, they meet in such interesting places.’
‘I don’t know,’ replied Victoria, ‘I haven’t asked him, I don’t know much about him.’
Tilly put the mugs tidily on the dressing table, ready to wash up later.
‘Time enough for that,’ she said comfortably. ‘What about the two o’clock medicine round in the meantime?’
It was during that night that Victoria had a dream, far too vivid, in which she knew, in some unexplained, dreamlike way, that Alexander had girl-friends all over the world and sent them flowers too. She woke convinced that this was true because the dream had seemed so real, and spent the day in such low spirits that Sister Crow advised her to get herself a tonic and her friends, sympathetic and carefully nonchalant as well as quite unaware of the cause of her long face, bore her off to the cinema, then crowded into her room afterwards eating the fish and chips someone had had the forethought to buy, and drinking vast quantities of tea. It was late by the time they had washed up the last mug and taken turns for the bathrooms and Victoria, when she got into bed, slept at once and all night so that when she wakened the next morning she wondered if perhaps the dream had only been a dream after all. She wasted so much time lying in bed thinking about it that she had to rush into her uniform and go down late to breakfast where, buttering bread thickly and gulping down tea, she forgot all about it in the early morning rush to get on duty in time.
She had another evening that day. It was when she was going off duty, a little late because the part-time staff nurse who covered the ward for Sister and her days off had been delayed. Not that it mattered; she had nothing much to do, there was no point in packing the few things she would need for at least two days. She was halfway down the stairs when Jeremy Blake caught up with her and slowed his pace to suit hers.
‘I owe you an apology,’ he started, and Victoria stared at him in astonishment. ‘I’m sorry for my rudeness—perhaps we could cry quits?’
She looked at him as they reached the landing leading to the surgical wards. He was half smiling, but his eyes were cold and she wondered why he should bother to apologise when it was so obvious that his heart wasn’t in it. All the same, it would be much easier on the ward if they maintained some semblance of friendship.
‘All right,’ she said, ‘I’ll accept your apology. It’s much easier to work with people if you’re on good terms with them, isn’t it?’
She gave him a little nod and ran down the stairs to the ground floor, and on the way over to the Home tried to decide why he had bothered to seek her out and why he wanted to get on good terms with her again. For no reason she could think of, and certainly no good reason. She shrugged the little incident off and went along to the sitting room to join her friends at a belated and ample tea, and was caught up at once in the never-ending shop talk. She usually disliked it, but now she welcomed it as a distraction from her own thoughts.
Victoria was off at eight o’clock the day before her weekend was to begi
n. She had spent her off-duty putting her night things into a case, washing her hair and doing her nails, although she didn’t even know at what time Alexander was to fetch her in the morning—come to that, she didn’t even know if he was back in England. She decided on an early night and went to bed rather cross; probably he had forgotten all about her. She remembered her dream and, a prey to a variety of wild thoughts, went immediately to sleep, to be awakened ten minutes later by Nurse Black.
‘There’s a call for you.’ Beauty was shaking her shoulder urgently and breathing heavily because she had had to run up two flights of stairs. ‘I was going through the hall and the telephone rang. I answered it and it’s for you, Staff.’
Victoria yawned hugely. ‘Oh, no—did they say who they were?’ She was bemused by her ten minutes’ oblivion and snuggled her head back on to the pillow again as she spoke, her eyes already shut.
Beauty sounded almost despairing, ‘Oh, Staff, do wake up! I don’t know who it is, only he said to tell you that if you keep him waiting too long he’ll miss the boat. I think,’ she essayed belatedly, ‘it’s that Dutch doctor.’
She jumped a little as Victoria surged out of bed, dragged on her dressing gown, thrust her feet into her slippers and in a state of great disarray, tore out of the room. Little Nurse Black, who liked Victoria very much, tidied her bed for her before she followed more sedately, shutting the door gently behind her.
‘Dear girl,’ said Alexander’s voice in Victoria’s now wide-awake ear, ‘were you fast asleep? A little early, surely?’
How disconcerting the man was, never saying Hullo or How are you, so that she might have time to shake her addled, happy wits together!
‘I didn’t know what time—I thought I’d better be ready. I was tired,’ she finished snappily.
‘But not cross. I’ll be outside the Home at nine o’clock. Snatch some breakfast before then, we want to get the one o’clock boat from Weymouth.’
She nodded, just as though he were there, beside her. ‘I’ll be ready.’
‘Now go back to bed and go to sleep. Goodnight, Victoria.’
She said softly, ‘Goodnight, Alexander,’ and listened while he hung up and the line went dead, then went slowly upstairs again to do exactly as he had bidden her; get into her bed and go to sleep.
Victoria was up, dressed, breakfasted and seething with impatience long before nine o’clock. She sat on the end of her bed watching the hands of her wrist watch crawl round its face, and when at last they were on the hour she forced herself to go on sitting for another two minutes in case he should find her too eager. She was wearing the cinnamon outfit again; she darted to the mirror just once more to peer at her reflection and then, stamping down a strong desire to do her hair just once more too, went down to the front door. The Mercedes was outside and Alexander was sitting behind the wheel, leaning back comfortably, smoking his pipe. He looked disappointingly placid, and if she had hoped that his expression would alter when he turned his head and saw her, she was doomed to disappointment. He got out of the car, looking pleased to see her and no more than that, said Hullo and put her case in the boot. But when she was in the car, sitting beside him, he turned to look at her with a face which was still placid, but his eyes made up for the vague, let-down feeling she had felt, and as though he had guessed her thoughts he said on a laugh: ‘We couldn’t have chosen a more public spot to meet, could we?’ He waved his hand, and following its sweep, Victoria was forced to agree with him. The theatre staff, idle for a few minutes before the day’s list started, were at a window, so was Home Sister from her little office in the Home, and through the open door leading into the hospital, a constant stream of nurses on their way to the first coffee break paused to stare. Victoria shuddered delicately; she could guess the conversation over the coffee cups, by the time she got back in three days’ time, they would have forgotten all about her going away with the Dutch doctor, but at the moment she provided a nice morsel of gossip to help along the usual stodge of ward news.
‘A pity,’ said her companion thoughtfully, ‘that we haven’t the time to give them value for their money.’
Victoria stopped fiddling with her seat belt in order to look at him. The gleam in his eyes which she had already so happily noticed had become more pronounced; she decided that it would be wiser not to ask him just what he meant; instead she told him meekly that she was ready when he was, and was rewarded by his laugh.
They talked the whole time on the journey to Weymouth, but never once about themselves. Over the coffee they stopped to drink, he spoke vaguely about his work and his family, discussed his dogs, described his elderly housekeeper and had so little to say about himself that Victoria was left with the feeling that she knew nothing about him, a state of affairs which she recognised as unsatisfactory, and all the more so because she was so besotted by him that it didn’t really matter in the least.
They made excellent time; there was still more than an hour before the boat sailed. They slid smoothly along the wide curve of Weymouth’s seafront, pleasantly empty so early in the year although the April sun was bright if not very warm. Halfway along it, Alexander turned off into the town, garaged the car, transferring Victoria and the cases into a taxi. On board he installed her in the half-empty ship and disappeared, to reappear five minutes later with the news that he had a table for lunch; news which pleased her very much, because she had breakfasted early and sketchily.
There were a few people in the restaurant; they lunched at leisure so that they were well out to sea by the time they had finished, and because the sun was still shining and the air smelled fresh after London, Victoria elected to fetch a scarf for her hair and they went up on deck, where they walked up and down and round and round, occasionally leaning over the side to watch the sea below. Mostly they talked and when, occasionally, they fell silent, Victoria, hanging over the side of the boat, her elbow touching his, was happy because although they weren’t saying a word, it was as though they were talking all the time…
She peered sideways at him and found him watching her, and her cheeks already pink from the wind, took on a more vivid colour. His eyebrows arched and his mouth curved in a smile and she looked away, only to turn to him again when he said gently:
‘For such a pretty girl, Victoria, you’re shy.’ He flung an arm round her shoulders. ‘Think of me as a friend, dear girl,’ he advised her. And then, lightly, ‘Tell me, how is our Doctor Blake?’
It was impossible advice he had given her, but it was a relief to have something else to talk about. She told him about the apology at some length. ‘It’s as though he wants to be friendly,’ she explained, ‘and that’s a good thing, because we have to see each other every day and it was a little difficult.’
‘Yes,’ Alexander turned to study her. ‘You’re such a nice person yourself, you don’t always see the nastiness in anyone else, do you? Let’s hope he means it.’
‘Why ever shouldn’t he?’ she wanted to know.
He didn’t answer her, but looked at his watch. ‘Time for tea,’ he suggested cheerfully.
They had barely finished the meal when the Casquettes lighthouse came into sight and then distant Alderney, and presently, ahead of them, Guernsey and the little islands wreathing its harbour. They made no haste to go ashore when the boat docked; it was as quick to go last as first, Alexander declared. Victoria, who disliked crowds, was content to lean over the rail and presently saw her parents and waved happily. ‘Is anyone coming to meet you?’ she asked.
‘Yes—they’re a little to the left of your people. I hope I’m to meet your three sisters.’
‘Of course. Let’s go now, there’s almost no one left.’
Her family fell upon her lovingly, as though it had been years instead of weeks since she had last seen them. She embraced and was embraced and finally said: ‘This is Doctor van Schuylen—Alexander, who was so kind as to bring me over.’
There was a round of handshaking before he said: ‘My friends are here to
o—may I introduce them?’
There was more handshaking and a good deal of friendly talk, for Jacques, his friend, was the son of an acquaintance of Mr Parsons, and his wife Prue remembered meeting Amabel on the tennis courts last summer. It was all very jolly and gay, and Victoria had a small stabbing doubt that perhaps now that Alexander was with his friends he might not want to spend his days with her—a doubt most agreeably squashed when he told her for everyone to hear who chose: ‘I’m coming for you tomorrow morning—is nine o’clock too early? We’ll have the whole day.’
He smiled nicely at her and her heart jumped absurdly. She pushed her hair out of her eyes impatiently and said softly: ‘That will be lovely,’ and watched the little sparks in his eyes as he looked at her.
‘Yes, it will be lovely,’ he said.
CHAPTER FOUR
THERE was a fierce wind blowing when Victoria got up the next morning, although the sun shone fitfully between scudding clouds. She crept along to the bathroom, put on slacks and a sweater and was tying back her copper hair with a velvet ribbon when Amabel came in.
‘You’re up early,’ she remarked. ‘What time is he coming?’
‘Nine—I’m going down to get tea, do you want a cup?’
Her sister got on to the bed and pulled the eiderdown round her. ‘Yes, please. Vicky, before the others come in—are you in love with him?’
Victoria turned to survey her sister—she and Amabel got on well together, but then Amabel got on well with most people. ‘Yes,’ she said at length, ‘I think I am, but I have to be sure, don’t I?’ She gave her hair a final, rather vicious tug. ‘And I don’t know about him—he’s quiet; I’m never quite sure what he’s thinking.’
‘I daresay he’s had a lot of girl-friends. How old is he? Thirty-five? Well, it stands to reason…but he’s nice. Do you think he likes us?’