by Betty Neels
She had moved back even further, intent on keeping out of his line of vision, and it was unfortunate that her aunt should call her by name in her rather loud voice.
‘Trixie,’ cooed Aunt Alice, fortissimo, ‘come here, dear, the colonel wants to see you.’
There was nothing for it but to abandon her dark corner and make her way across the room to where the old gentleman stood, and of course at that same moment Margaret and the professor had paused to speak to someone and had turned round to watch her. She was unable to avoid his glance, but she gave no sign of recognition, and, to her great feeling of relief, nor did he.
Well, why should he? He had never actually looked at her on the ward and she was dressed differently. She retired to a sofa with the colonel for the kind of chat her companion enjoyed; he was holding forth about politics, modern youth and modern warfare to a listening audience. Trixie was a very good listener. He got up to go presently. ‘A nice little talk, my dear; I wish we could have stayed longer but we must attend a function, as you may know.’ He looked around him. ‘Where is Krijn? Ah—with Margaret. Such a very pretty girl, even an absent-minded professor may be forgiven if he falls under her spell.’
He patted Trixie’s shoulder. ‘We must talk again,’ he told her as they said goodbye.
She slipped away to the other end of the room, reluctant to come face to face with the professor, and presently the guests began to leave. A small party of Margaret’s closest friends were taking her out to dinner and Trixie was kept busy finding coats and wraps.
‘Coming with us?’ asked one of the girls.
There was no need for her to reply. Margaret had overheard and said at once, ‘Oh, Trixie hates going to restaurants, and besides, she’s on duty at that hospital of hers at the crack of dawn.’
Neither of which was true, but Trixie said nothing. Margaret didn’t mean to be unkind; she was thoughtless and spoilt and ever since they had been children together she had been accustomed to the idea that Trixie was by way of being a poor relation, to be treated as one of the family but at the same time to make herself useful and obliging.
Trixie had put up with that, for she was grateful for having a home and a family of sorts. All the same, it had been a heaven-sent blessing when the eligible young man had fancied himself in love with her and she had at last embarked on a life of her own. If she had been hurt she had very firmly never allowed anyone to see it. She saw them into their cars and went back into the house to eat her dinner with her aunt and uncle and agree, with sincerity, that Margaret was quite beautiful. ‘If only she would settle down,’ observed Aunt Alice. ‘That was a very distinguished man who came with the colonel—a professor, too. I wonder what he does...’
Trixie, who could have told her, remained silent.
She left the house the next morning without having seen Margaret again. She was on duty at ten o’clock for the rest of the day and only her uncle had been at breakfast with her. ‘I’ll say goodbye to your aunt and Margaret for you,’ he told her. ‘They both need a good rest after all the trouble they went to for the party.’ He sounded faintly reproachful. ‘A pity you couldn’t have had a day or two more free to give a hand.’
Trixie said yes, it was, wasn’t it? and forbore from reminding him that she had been up until one o’clock that morning, helping the maid to get the room straight again. She thanked him for the party, left polite messages for Aunt Alice and Margaret and took herself off, back to the East End where Timothy’s spread its forbidding grey stone, encircled by narrow busy streets and rows of poky houses. The ugly old hospital was her home now and back in her room in the nurses’ home she surveyed it with all the pride of a houseowner. Over the months she had bought cushions, a table-lamp, a pretty bedspread and a picture or two. She admired them now as she got into her uniform and then went along to the tiny kitchen to make a cup of tea. Some of her friends were there and they took their mugs back to her room for the last few minutes before they had to go on duty, full of questions about the party.
‘Was there anyone exciting there?’ asked Mary.
‘They were almost all people I didn’t know.’ Trixie almost mentioned the professor and decided not to; after all he was hardly exciting, although he had looked remarkably handsome... ‘There was a dinner party for godmothers and godfathers and uncles and aunts,’ she explained. ‘The party was for Margaret’s friends.’
‘What were the clothes like?’ someone asked.
They spent the rest of the time discussing fashion before going off to their various wards.
Ten o’clock in the morning wasn’t a favourite time at which to go on duty; housemen were checking up on patients, several of whom were being taken to various departments for treatment or tests, and those who were left in their beds wanted things—hot drinks, cold drinks, pillows turned, sheets changed, bedpans, injections, two-hourly feeds... Trixie went to and fro happily enough; Staff Nurse Bennett had days off and the part-time staff nurse doing her job was married with young children, tolerant of the most troublesome patient and kind but firm with the nurses. Trixie went off duty that evening content with her day and slept the moment her head touched the pillow. With Staff Nurse Bennett still away the following day was just as satisfying. Trixie, off duty at five o’clock, joined several of her friends and went to the cinema and then gathered in the kitchen to eat the fish and chips they had bought on the way home. Life might not be very exciting, but at least it offered friendships, security and held few surprises. She slept the sleep of the hardworking and went on duty the next morning to find Staff Nurse Bennett in a bad temper and Sister off duty for the day.
Everything went wrong, of course; it always did when Staff Nurse Bennett was there: Trixie dropped things, spilt things and, according to her senior, took twice as long as anyone else to do things. Consequently she was late for her dinner and in a thoroughly bad temper as she nipped smartly along the corridors to the canteen, to encounter Professor van der Brink-Schaaksma, ambling along, an untidy pile of papers under one arm, and, as usual, deep in thought. He glanced at her as she passed him, scurrying along with her head down, to come to a sudden halt when he said, ‘Trixie—you are the girl in the brown dress.’
He had turned back to where she was standing. ‘I thought that I had seen you somewhere. You fell over...’ His sleepy eyes surveyed her. ‘You are a friend of Margaret’s, to whose party I was invited? It seems unlikely.’
Before she could close her astonished mouth and say a word, he nodded his handsome head, gave her a kindly smile and went on his way.
‘Well,’ said Trixie. ‘Well...’ All the clever replies she might have made and hadn’t flooded into her head. He had probably uttered his thoughts out loud but that didn’t make any difference; it was only too apparent that he had compared her with Margaret and found the comparison untenable.
She flounced off into the canteen in quite a nasty temper, rejected the boiled beef and carrots on the menu, pushed prunes and custard round her plate, drank two cups of very strong tea and marched back to the ward where Staff Nurse Bennett, intent on hauling her over the coals for leaving a bowl on the wrong shelf in the treatment-room, was quite bowled over by the usually well-mannered Trixie’s begging her to stop nagging. ‘You’ll be a most awful wife,’ said Trixie. ‘In fact I doubt if you’ll ever get married, everlastingly picking holes in people.’
She had swept away to get a bed ready to admit a new patient, leaving Staff Nurse Bennett speechless.
It was two days later that she overheard Sister Snell telling Staff Nurse Bennett that Professor van der Brink-Schaaksma had gone to Holland. ‘Leiden, I believe—to deliver a series of lectures. A pity he is so wrapped up in his work—such a handsome man, too. I did hear that he had an unhappy love-affair some time ago...’
It was disappointing that they moved away and Trixie missed the rest of it. Not that she was in the least interested in
the man, she told herself as she made up empty beds. Indeed, she was sorry for him, going around with his head in endocrinal clouds and never without a pile of papers or some weighty tome under one arm. He needed a wife to give him something else to think about. He had, she reflected, been taken with Margaret, and he couldn’t be all that old. Late thirties or forty perhaps, and Margaret had fancied him. He was good-looking, with beautiful manners, and probably comfortably off. She wondered where he lived. She was aware that he was fairly frequently at Timothy’s, but it didn’t take long to go to and fro between Holland and England; he could be living there just as easily as living in London. She had to stop thinking about him then, because the new patient with diabetes was feeling sick, which could be hazardous, for she hadn’t been stabilised yet. Trixie abandoned the beds and nipped smartly down the ward to deal with the situation.
October was creeping to its close, getting colder each day, so that the desire to go out in one’s off duty became very faint; the pleasant fug in the nurses’ sitting-room, with the television turned on and the gas fire up as high as it would go, became the focal point for anyone lucky enough to be off duty.
Trixie, curled up in one of the rather shabby armchairs sleepily watching TV, after a long day’s work, a medical book open on her lap but so far unread, closed her eyes. She and Jill had agreed to ask each other questions about the circulatory system, but Jill was already dozing, her mouth slightly open, her cap, which she hadn’t bothered to take off, a crumpled ruin sliding over one ear. It would be supper in an hour and the prospect of a pot of tea, a gossip and early bed was very appealing. ‘I’m in a comfortable rut,’ muttered Trixie as she dropped off.
To be awakened in seconds by Mary Fitzjohn’s voice. ‘There you are—someone wants you on the phone.’ She sniffed in a derogatory way. ‘Honestly, what a way to spend an evening—the pair of you. No wonder Jill’s getting fat, lolling around.’ She turned an accusing eye on to Trixie. ‘Hadn’t you better answer the phone?’
She went away and Trixie got out of her chair, gave Jill an apologetic smile, and went into the hall and picked up the receiver.
She almost fumbled and dropped it again at the sound of Professor van der Brink-Schaatsma’s unhurried voice. ‘Trixie? I should like to take you out to dinner. I’ll be outside the entrance in half an hour.’
She got her breath back. ‘I think you must be mistaken.’ She spoke in her sensible way, picturing him engrossed in some learned work or other and half remembering that he was supposed to be taking someone out that evening, forgetful of who it was. ‘I’m Trixie.’
‘Of course you are.’ He sounded testy. ‘Is half an hour not long enough?’
‘More than enough, only I’m surprised—you don’t know me...’
‘That is why I am asking you to have dinner with me.’
It was a reasonable answer; besides, supper in the canteen—ham, salad and boiled potatoes since it was Thursday—was hardly a mouth-watering prospect. ‘I’ll be at the entrance in half an hour,’ said Trixie, and the moment she had said it wished that she hadn’t.
While she showered, got into the blue crêpe, did her face and hair, which she wound into a chignon, she cogitated over the professor’s strange invitation. She was almost ready when she hit on what had to be the reason. He wanted to know more about Margaret. Why hadn’t she thought of that before? He had obviously been smitten at the party, probably had been seeing her since then and wanted to talk about her, and who better than a member of the family? She got into her coat—navy-blue wool, by no means new but elegant in a timeless way—thrust her tired feet into her best shoes, crammed things into her clutchbag and went along to the entrance.
Halfway across the entrance hall she paused, suddenly wishing to turn and run, but it was too late; the professor was standing by the door, leaning against the wall, writing something in a notebook, but he glanced up, put the notebook away and came to meet her.
His smile was delightful and she smiled back. ‘You were not christened Trixie?’ he asked.
It seemed a strange kind of greeting. ‘No, Beatrice. My aunt preferred Trixie.’
He nodded. ‘Yes, that I believe.’ He held the door open for her and led her across the courtyard to where a dark-blue Bentley stood, settled her into it and got in beside her.
There wasn’t a great deal of traffic in that part of London at that time of the evening; the rush-hour had passed and there were few taxis or cars for the people who lived around Timothy’s ate their suppers and then settled down in front of the telly, and if they were going to the local pub or cinema they walked.
The Bentley slid smoothly away, going westward, and presently joining the more elegant evening traffic, and then, after ten minutes or so, coming to a halt outside the Connaught Hotel.
The professor appeared to be known; Trixie, conscious that the blue crêpe wasn’t doing justice to the occasion, followed a waiter to a candlelit table, accepted the sherry she was offered and waited for the professor to say something, to explain...
She was disappointed; he began a rambling conversation about nothing much, pausing only long enough to recommend the lobster mousse, the noisette of lamb with its accompanying tarragon sauce, and, since she was hungry and this was an unexpected treat, she forbore from asking any questions. Only when she had polished off the profiteroles and had handed him his coffee-cup did she ask, ‘Why have you asked me to dine with you, Professor? There has to be a reason.’ When he didn’t answer at once, she prompted, ‘I dare say you want to talk about Margaret.’
‘Margaret? Oh, your cousin. Why should I wish to know about her?’
Trixie was a girl of sound common sense, but her tongue had been loosened by two glasses of wine on top of the sherry. ‘Well, I thought...that is, I thought that you were—well, interested in her—that you might want to talk about her.’
‘A charming girl, I have no doubt of that. I wish to talk about you, and may I say that I do not think that Trixie suits you at all; I shall call you Beatrice.’
‘Oh, well—if you like. Mother and Father always called me Beatrice; Aunt Alice has always called me Trixie.’
He didn’t appear to be listening. Any minute now, thought Trixie, he’s going to start making notes—he’s probably forgotten where he is.
She nodded her head in confirmation of this thought when he said, ‘I am writing a book. It absorbs a good deal of my time, indeed I wish that I could devote my days to it, but it seems it is not possible to do so; there are patients to attend, lectures and consultations—there are things which cannot be put on one side. My social life is another matter. I wish to withdraw from it until such time as I have finished the book, but I find it difficult to refuse invitations to dinner, the theatre and so on. It had crossed my mind that if I had a wife she might deal with that side of my life; act, as it were, as a buffer between me and these distractions. I am aware that from time to time it is obligatory for me to attend some function or other and that I must from time to time entertain my friends. A wife could deal with such matters, however, leaving me free to work on my book.’
Trixie poured more coffee for them both. ‘Is it very important to you, this book?’
‘To me, yes. And I hope to the medical profession.’
‘How much have you written?’
‘The first few chapters. There is a good deal of research.’
‘Why are you telling me this, Professor?’
Just for a moment he lifted heavy lids and she saw how blue his eyes were. ‘I haven’t made myself clear? I believe that you would be a most suitable wife, Beatrice.’
She put down her coffee-cup with a hand which shook only slightly.
‘Why?’
‘I still have not made myself clear? You are quiet, you have a pleasant voice, the patients like you, you are, I gather, popular in the hospital. You do not giggle or shrie
k with laughter, you dress sensibly, and above all you have no family, for I surmised from my brief visit to your aunt’s house that you are very much the poor relation.’
She said drily, ‘You have described me very accurately, Professor, only you haven’t mentioned my lack of good looks—I am not tall and willowy, indeed I am plump and not in the least pretty.’
He looked surprised. ‘I had hardly noticed and I do not think that looks matter.’
‘No?’ She sounded tart. ‘Tell me, Professor, have you no cousin or sister who might act as a buffer between you and your social commitments?’
‘Sister? Oh, I have four, all married and living in Holland and as for cousins—yes, I have any number; I cannot remember the names of half of them. No, no, I feel that a wife would solve my problem.’ He leaned back in his chair, completely at ease. ‘A platonic relationship, naturally—all I would ask of you would be to order my household in such a way that I have a maximum of quiet.’
‘Will you still work at Timothy’s?’
‘Of course. Very shortly I shall be returning to Holland, where I have beds in several hospitals, but coming here at regular intervals and for consultations when necessary.’
‘I can’t speak any Dutch,’ observed Trixie, who had a practical mind.
‘You will learn! In any case English is widely spoken.’
She said rather wildly, ‘We’re talking as though I’ve agreed to—your proposal, but I haven’t.’
‘I would hardly expect you to do so at a moment’s notice; you are far too sensible a young woman to do that. I leave it to you to consider the matter at your leisure.’
He was staring at her, looking, for the moment, not in the least absent-minded. ‘Yes, well...but I don’t think...that is, it’s all rather unusual.’ She closed her eyes for a second and opened them again. He was still there; she wasn’t dreaming. ‘If you don’t mind, I think I’d like to go back to Timothy’s.’
He drove her back, talking in a desultory manner about this and that, and never said another word about his astonishing proposal. She allowed herself to be helped out of the car, feeling bewildered, and stammered her awkward thanks before hurrying away to the nurses’ home. He hadn’t said a word about seeing her again, she thought as she tore off her clothes and jumped into bed. Probably, when they did meet again, he would have forgotten the whole episode. She began to go over the evening and fell asleep halfway through, telling herself that something would happen anyway.