Бетти Нильс – An Unlikely Romance (страница 3)

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 clutch-bag 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.