Saturday′s Child
Saturday's Child
Betty Neels
Mills & Boon presents the complete Betty Neels collection. Timeless tales of heart-warming romance by one of the world’s best-loved romance authors.SHE WAS A TRUE “SATURDAY’S CHILD”Abigail worked hard for a living. And she expected to go on earning her own living for no man had shown signs of wanting to marry her—least of all the mysterious Professor Dominic van Wijkelen. Certainly he admired her nursing skills. He confi dently asked her to take on his private cases, which took Abigail from London to Holland then Spain.But all he seemed to feel for her was intense dislike! Did Dominic not trust women? Was she too plain? Whatever the reason, there was little Abigail could do about it.
Saturday’s Child
Betty Neels
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CHAPTER ONE
THE ROOM WAS chilly and severe, as was the woman sitting behind the desk in one of its corners. The desk lamp, which only partly held at bay the fog of the darkened January sky outside, also served to illuminate her features, and the girl who had taken the chair on the opposite side of the desk in answer to the woman’s brisk nod occupied herself in giving her interviewer a softer hair-style, appropriate make-up and a more becoming dress. These alterations, mused Miss Abigail Trent, as she admitted to that name, would take away at least ten years from the age of her unconscious interviewer, who looked up and repeated, ‘Your age, Miss Trent?’
‘Twenty-four.’
‘Your education?’
Abigail murmured the name of a well-known girls’ boarding school. when her father had been alive there had been money enough …
‘You are state Registered?’
Abigail nodded and when asked to give the name of her training school mentioned a famous teaching hospital in London.
‘Have you family ties?’
She thought of the two cousins in Canada; they sent her Christmas cards each year, but they could hardly be described as ties, nor, for that matter, could Uncle Sedgeley, her mother’s brother, married to a peer’s sister and landed gentry, and totally disapproving of her father, her mother’s marriage to him and to Abigail herself. She said quietly in her pleasant voice: ‘No,’ and when she was asked what branch of nursing she had most recently been in, said: ‘Surgery—the operating theatre, too.’
‘You’re willing to travel?’
It sounded like the beginnings of an advertisement in the Personal Column of The Times. She said, ‘Certainly,’ and smiled at the woman, who didn’t smile back but looked at her watch as though time was rationed for her interviews and she had used it all up on Abigail. She got up briskly and went across to the filing cabinet against one wall and started pulling out its drawers. Presently she came back with a small folder and sat down again. ‘I think we could offer you a post immediately if you are prepared to take a medical case. A patient in Amsterdam—an American woman staying with friends there, in their flat. She has been in hospital with severe gastric symptoms and is now back with them—still in bed, of course, pending the doctor’s decision. She didn’t care for the hospital, for she speaks no Dutch and found the regulations a little trying. She is, I gather, rather …’ She wisely left the sentence unfinished and went on: ‘You will be paid twenty pounds a week and receive your board and lodging, and she is prepared to pay your fare at the end of a fortnight. The flat is, I believe, in one of the best parts of the city. You will have two and a half hours free every afternoon, and such other times as you can arrange for yourself. Should you take the post, you will pay this agency twelve and a half per cent of your salary until such time as you leave.’
She finished speaking and sat, tapping her ballpoint on the blotting pad in front of her. After perhaps half a minute she enquired, ‘Well, Miss Trent, do you care to take the case?’
It wasn’t quite what Abigail wanted, although she hardly knew what she did want—only to get away from London—from England, for a while, so that she could adjust herself to a future which no longer held her mother. And she needed the money. She got to her feet. ‘Yes, I’ll take it,’ she said. ‘When do you want me to go?’
‘Please sit down again.’ The woman looked more severe than ever. ‘I’ll give you the patient’s name and address and advise you on the easiest way of getting to the case. I suggest that you fly over early tomorrow, so that you will arrive in Amsterdam by lunch time—that should give you time to unpack, see your patient and begin your duties without delay.’
Abigail blinked the fine silky lashes of eyes which were her sole claim to beauty in an otherwise ordinary face. They were brown and large and the brows above them were silky too. But her nose was too short, her mouth too wide and her hair too mousy to give her even a modicum of good looks. She wasn’t sure at this moment if the change would be for the better; probably not, but she could always go back to hospital again. She held out a hand in its slightly shabby glove and took the papers which the woman was holding out to her.
Two minutes later she was outside in the street, standing rather uncertainly on the pavement while the passers-by pushed and jostled her first one way, then the other; not meaning to treat her roughly, but intent on getting to wherever they were going as quickly as possible. Presently she crossed the road, drawn by the cheerful lights of a Golden Egg restaurant, and went inside. It was almost twelve o’clock on this damp and foggy day in the first week of January; lunch in a pleasant warmth seemed a good idea. She chose egg and chips and coffee and while she was waiting for them got out her little notebook and started doing sums. Twenty pounds a week would be a godsend; she hadn’t earned any money at all for three months now. When her mother had fallen ill, she had given up her job at the hospital and stayed at home to nurse her, because the doctor had told her that her mother had only a few months to live anyway, and Abigail couldn’t bear the thought of her living out those last few weeks in some strange hospital bed. She had gone home for almost three months, and her mother had had every small comfort and luxury she wished for or needed, and Abigail had spent what money she had saved, which wasn’t much, to pay for them. Her mother’s pension had paid the rent of their small flat and the household expenses, but when she had died there had been nothing left at all. The furniture went with the flat, her mother’s jewellery, never very valuable, had been sold over the last five years, and Bollinger, who had served her father faithfully until his death and had refused to leave them after it, was owed almost a year of his low wages. The funeral had taken almost all the money she had, and now today, barely a week later, she had gone out to get a job, and it had had to be private nursing—that way she would get her board and lodging free and would get paid sooner.
The egg and chips arrived and she ate them, still doing sums in her head. She would just about be able to get to Amsterdam and have a pound or two in her purse until she was paid. Two weeks wasn’t long to wait, and anyway it didn’t look as though she was going to get much free time in which to spend her money. Even when the twelve and a half per cent had been deducted, she would still be able to send Bollinger some money. He would retire now, she supposed, but he would only have his old age pension, and that wouldn’t go far in London. She began to worry about where he would live; after that night they would have to leave the flat and she wasn’t going to leave him to struggle on his own after the years of service he had given them, and he had been so kind and helpful to her and her mother. The food on her plate became dimmed by the tears in her eyes, but she fought them back and doggedly went on eating the chips on her plate and drinking the coffee she didn’t want any more.
She took a bus back to the flat, the small top flat just off the Cromwell Road where they had lived since her father died and Abigail had started her hospital training. As she put her key in the front door at the top of the long flights of stairs, she could hear Bollinger in the kitchen; he came to its door as she went inside and said comfortably:
‘There you are, Miss Abby, the kettle’s on and I treated us to some crumpets. Nothing like a nice hot crumpet.’ He went back to the gas stove. ‘How did it go?’
‘I’ve got a job, Bolly—twenty pounds a week, in Amsterdam, nursing an American woman. I’m to go tomorrow, and isn’t it lucky I’ve still got my passport from that trip we had to Ostend? So everything’s going to be OK.’ She cast her coat and hat over the back of one of the wooden chairs at the table and went to get the teapot from the dresser. ‘Now, about you—did you manage to find anything?’
‘I did—the woman at the paper shop, remember her? She’s got a daughter with a house just round the corner from here. I can have a room and me meals with her and her husband. Four pounds and fifty pence a week—leaves me plenty, so don’t you worry your pretty head about me.’
She looked at him with deep affection, loving him for the cheerful lie. He was almost seventy, she knew, and he had worked very hard around the flat since they had moved into it, shopping and cooking and repairing fuses and waiting on her mother hand and foot. It was impossible to repay him, but at least she would see that he got the money which they owed him and then a small weekly pension after that so that he could find a proper home and not some small back room where he would be lonely. Years ago he had been her father’s gardener and odd job man, and when her father had died he had somehow stayed on with them, smoothing her mother’s path, offering practical advice when it was discovered that there was no money at all, and Abigail had never quite discovered how it was that he had persuaded her mother to keep him on at such a ridiculous wage.
She made the tea and they sat down together with the plate of crumpets between them. ‘I’m glad you’ve got somewhere to go for the present,’ began Abigail. She opened her handbag. ‘They gave me five pounds in advance on my salary,’ she went on mendaciously. ‘I’ve got more than enough and this’ll help you to get started, then each week, once I get my pay, I shall send you some money,’ and when he began to protest, ‘No, Bolly dear, you’re my friend and you were Mother’s and Father’s friend too—I can well afford to pay you back the wages we owe you and then pay you a little each week. It won’t take me long, you see, for I get my room and my food for free, don’t I? And in a little while I’ll get a hospital job again and perhaps we can find a small place and you can come and run it for me while I work.’
She smiled at him, trying not to see that he was getting quite elderly now and wouldn’t be fit to do much for many more years—something she would worry about when the time came, she told herself vigorously. She poured more tea and said cheerfully: ‘How funny Uncle Sedgeley was yesterday. I wonder what he and Aunt Miriam would have done if I’d accepted their invitation to go to Gore Park and stay with them? They hated Father, didn’t they, because he was a Methodist parson and hadn’t any worldly ideas and they hadn’t been near …’ She paused, unable to bear talking of her mother. ‘Aunt Miriam told me how fortunate I was that I had a vocation, for all the world as though I’d taken a vow not to marry.’
‘Of course you’ll marry, Miss Abby,’ said Bollinger, quite shocked.
‘That’s nice of you to say so, Bolly, but I’m afraid she may be right, you know. I’m twenty-four and I’ve never had a proposal—nothing even approaching one. I’m a sort of universal sister, you know, because I’m plain.’
‘You’re talking nonsense, Miss Abby. You just haven’t met the right man, that’s all. He’ll come, don’t you fret.’
‘Yes? Well, when he does I shan’t marry him unless he lets you come along too,’ she said firmly. ‘Now let’s go and see this room of yours and then I’ll treat us to the pictures.’
A remark which would have shocked Uncle Sedgeley if he could have heard it; to go to the cinema barely a week after her mother’s funeral—unthinkable! She could just hear him saying it, but it didn’t matter what he thought; her mother would have been the first one to suggest it. Life went on and you didn’t forget someone just because you sat in the stalls and watched some film or other without seeing any of it, and at least it would be warm there and infinitely better than sitting in the little flat talking, inevitably, of old times with Bolly, something she couldn’t bear to do.
She said goodbye to him the next morning and started her journey. She had booked her flight when she had left the agency, obedient to the severe woman’s instructions, and had packed her case with the sort of clothes she considered she might need, adding the blue uniform dresses and caps and aprons she had been forced to buy, and now on the plane at last, she got out her little notebook again and did some anxious arithmetic. With luck she wouldn’t have to spend more than the equivalent of a few shillings; stamps for her letters to Bollinger, small odds and ends for herself. She hoped that her patient might need her for more than two weeks—three, or even four weeks at twenty pounds a week would mount up nicely, and they were going to pay her fare too. She closed the little book, opened the newspaper the air hostess had handed her and read it with grave attention, fearful of allowing her thoughts to wander, and was surprised when far below she saw the flat coast of Holland, glimpsed through the layers of cloud.
Schiphol, she discovered, was large, efficient and pleasantly welcoming. With hundreds like her, she was passed along the human conveyor belt which eventually spilled her into the open air once more, only to be whisked up once more into the waiting bus which would take her to Amsterdam. It covered the ten miles to the capital with a speed which hardly gave her time to look around her and she got out at the bus terminus, still not quite believing that she was in Holland. It seemed such a very short time ago since she had said goodbye to Bollinger, as indeed it was.
Mindful of her instructions, she took a taxi to the address in the Apollolaan. It was, she quickly discovered, away from the centre of the city, for they quickly left the bustling, older part behind, to drive through modern streets lined with blocks of flats and shops. When they stopped half way down the Apollolaan, she got out, paid the driver from her small stock of money and crossed the pavement to enter the important-looking doorway of the building he had pointed out to her. It was of a substantial size, and from the cars parked before it, inhabited by the well-to-do, and inside the thickly carpeted foyer and neatly uniformed porter bore out her first impression. He greeted her civilly, and when she mentioned her name, ushered her into the lift, took her case from her and escorted her to the fourth floor. Here he abandoned her, her case parked beside her, outside the door of number twenty-one—occupied, according to the neat little plate at the side of the door, by Mr and Mrs E. Goldberg. Abigail drew a heartening breath and rang the beautifully polished bell.
The door was opened by a maid who, in answer to Abigail’s announcement of her name, invited her to enter, waved her to a chair, and disappeared. Abigail looked at the chair, a slender trifle which she felt sure would never bear the weight of her nicely rounded person, and stood looking around her. The hall was carpeted even more lushly than the foyer; the walls were hung with what she considered to be a truly hideous wallpaper, embossed and gilded, and as well as the little chair she had prudently ignored, there was a small settee, buttoned fatly into red velvet, and another chair with a straight back and a cane seat which looked decidedly uncomfortable. A wall table of gold and marble occupied the space between two doors, burdened with a French clock and matching vases. Abigail, who had a nice taste, shuddered delicately and wished that her mother could have been with her and share her feelings. For a moment her opulent surroundings faded to give place to the little flat in the Cromwell Road, but she resolutely closed her mind to her memories; self-pity helped no one, she told herself firmly, and turned to see who was coming through the door on the other side of the hall.
It had to be Mrs Goldberg, for she looked exactly like her name. She was middle-aged, with determinedly blonde hair, blue eyes which were still pretty and a baby doll face, nicely made up, which, while still attractive, had lost its youthful contours. She smiled now, holding out her hand, and when she spoke her voice was warm even though its accent was decidedly American.
‘Well, so you’re the nurse, my dear. I can’t tell you how glad we are to have you.’ She added dramatically, ‘I am exhausted, absolutely exhausted! Night and day have I been caring for our dear Clara—she is so sensitive, you know, we couldn’t leave her in hospital, although I’m sure they were kindness itself to her, but she’s used to the little comforts of life.’ The blue eyes looked at her a shade anxiously. ‘We hope that the worst is over; Doctor Vincent will be in after lunch and this evening he’ll bring a specialist—the very best to be got, I assure you—to see dear Clara, and he’ll decide whether to operate or not.’ She paused to take breath and Abigail asked quickly: ‘You’d like me to take over immediately, I expect? If I could go to my room and change …’
Mrs Goldberg smiled widely, showing a hint of gold tooth. ‘My dear, will you? I simply must rest. We lunch at half past twelve—so early, but when in Rome, I always say—If you could get into your uniform and make poor Clara a little more comfortable?’
‘Of course.’ Abigail smiled understandingly, hoping at the same time that Mrs Goldberg might suggest a cup of coffee or tea. Half past twelve was an hour away and she was, while not exactly tired, in need of a few minutes to collect herself, but Mrs Goldberg made no such offer, but followed her from the hall and into a short passage and so to her room. It was nice, with a view over the Apollolaan and comfortable anonymous furniture so often found in guest rooms, and it had the added attraction of a bathroom next door. As soon as she was alone Abigail unpacked her uniform, washed her face and hands, put her mousy hair up into its tidy bun, perched her frilly cap on top of it, buckled her belt around her trim waist and with a nicely made-up face, went back into the hall.
Mrs Goldberg must have been waiting for her; she appeared suddenly, like a cheerful outsize fairy, from one of the doors and said approvingly:
‘My, how quick you’ve been, and what a quaint outfit—that cap, it’s not a bit like our nurses wear back home.’
Abigail explained quickly that her hospital took pride in allowing its trained nurses to wear that particular headgear—it had been worn for a very long time and no one, least of all the nurses, wanted it changed.
‘Mighty becoming,’ commented Mrs Goldberg, ‘it sure will tickle poor Clara pink.’
Abigail, following her companion through another door, wondered if her patient felt well enough to be tickled by anything. At first sight it seemed not. Mrs Clara Morgan lay uncomfortably hunched against far too many pillows. Some of these she had tossed to the floor, the remainder were crowding into her back, which probably accounted for her petulant expression. She acknowledged Mrs Goldberg’s introduction languidly and said tiredly, ‘I’m glad you’ve come, Nurse, I’m very poorly and I need a great deal of skilled care and attention.’
Abigail murmured suitably and enquired if the doctor had left any message for her.
‘No,’ said Mrs Goldberg, ‘because he’ll be here in a couple of hours. Clara will tell you all about herself, won’t you, Girlie?’
Abigail judged it a good idea to get her oar in before her patient did, for she looked ill and tired and that was probably why she looked peevish. Her voice was persuasive. ‘Would you like me to give you a bed-bath and a fresh nightie and make you more comfortable? You’ll feel better for it.’
Her patient agreed, and while she submitted to Abigail’s kindly hands, discoursed at length upon her condition, its seriousness, the possibility of an operation, the need for her to return to the States as soon as she could, and the kindness of her friends the Goldbergs. That there was a thick thread of self-pity winding through her narrative was natural enough; it hadn’t taken Abigail long to gather that her patient was rich, spoilt and self-indulgent. She had, it transpired, been widowed twice, and, a still attractive woman in her early forties, was prepared to marry again should she find someone she liked sufficiently. Abigail listened without envy, because it wasn’t in her nature to be envious, and a certain amount of pity, because it seemed to her that Mrs Morgan was lonely too, despite her silver-backed hairbrushes and silk nighties and enormous bottles of perfume. But talking cheered her up, and by the time Abigail had smoothed the last wrinkle from the sheets, she declared that she felt a new woman.
‘I do believe we’re going to get on just fine,’ she declared. ‘I must admit that the idea of an English nurse didn’t appeal to me, but I’ll admit to being mistaken, though your uniform is pretty antiquated, isn’t it?’
Abigail admitted that perhaps it was. ‘They’re trying to change the uniforms in England, but you see, some of the hospitals are very old and they like to keep their own, however old-fashioned. Especially the caps—it’s like a regimental badge, everyone knows which hospital you were trained at just by looking at your cap.’
‘Well, I must say whoever thought of yours had a nice eye for something sexy.’
Abigail was folding towels neatly. No one had ever called her cap sexy before! She remained silent, nonplussed, and then said:
‘I think a nice milky drink, don’t you? I’ll go along and see about it.’
Milk and water, in equal proportions with afters of Mist. Mag. Tri., were her patient’s portion for lunch. Abigail measured carefully, arranged the two glasses on a little tray with a pretty cloth and bore them away to the sickroom, where she put the tray on the bed table, together with a selection of novels, the daily paper and a handful of glossy magazines, and then, quite famished, found her way to the dining room.
Mr Goldberg had come home to lunch. A small fat man with large glasses and a fringe of greying hair, possessed of a charming smile. Abigail liked him at once and wasn’t surprised to hear that he was something important to do with a permanent trade mission—anyone with a smile like that deserved to have a top job! They sat her between them at a large rectangular table and plied her with food. It was cold and grey outside, but here in the warm, over-furnished room, there was no need to think about the weather. She drank her soup, accepted a glass of wine and embarked on beef olives while she listened to her host and hostess and made polite replies to their questions whenever they asked them, which was frequently. She would have liked to have lingered over coffee with them, but she was on a job, after all. She excused herself and went back to her patient to find her asleep.
It seemed a good opportunity to unpack her few clothes and scribble a quick note to Bolly; most likely she would have the chance to post it before bedtime; if not, surely the hall porter would do it for her. She wrote the address with a little lump in her throat, because Bolly would probably be sitting by himself in that dreadful little back room with no other view than the house behind.
Dr Vincent came shortly afterwards. He was a tall man in his thirties, with regular features and an excellent command of the English language. He was obviously relieved to see Abigail and after he had examined Mrs Morgan and talked to her for a little while, he retired to the sitting room with Abigail so that he might discuss their patient. They sat opposite each other, on the edge of over-stuffed and very large easy chairs, because to sit back in them would have meant a complete loss of dignity on both their parts and the doctor was nothing if not dignified. He took her carefully through the ins and outs of Mrs Morgan’s illness. ‘This evening a specialist will come, Nurse—I shall of course accompany him. He is a consultant surgeon at several of our big hospitals and very well known. I feel that his opinion will be invaluable. It would be a pity for our patient to undergo an operation unless it is absolutely necessary. If we can get her well enough, she would much prefer that she should return to the United States with all speed. You are prepared to stay here until she returns, I hope?’
Abigail said that yes, she was. ‘What have they in mind?’ she wanted to know. ‘A gastrostomy? Surely if it’s a bad ulcer they’ll have to do an end-to-end anastimosis.’
Dr Vincent eyed her warily. ‘I think, Nurse, that we must leave such things for Professor van Wijkelen to decide.’
With a name like that, Abigail thought flippantly, a man ought to be able to decide anything. He would have a beard and begin all his remarks with -er. She would probably dislike him. Dr Vincent was speaking again, so she listened carefully to his instructions and forgot about the professor.
He came that evening, an hour or so after her patient had had another glass of milk and water with its attendant powder, and Abigail herself had had a short break for her own tea. Mr and Mrs Goldberg were out, and it had been brought to her on a tray in the sitting room. It had been pleasant to sit down for a little while on her own, while she had it, and then have the time to tidy herself, powder her ordinary nose and put on more lipstick. The results weren’t very encouraging, she considered, looking in the bedroom mirror. She had gone back to her patient’s room and taken her temperature and pulse, and sat her up more comfortably against her pillows, and was on a chair in her stockinged feet, reaching for a vase of flowers which someone had placed out of reach, and which, for some reason, Mrs Morgan had taken exception to, when there was a knock on the door and Doctor Vincent came in. The man who came in with him eclipsed him completely. He was a giant of a man, with a large frame which radiated energy despite the extreme leisureliness of his movements. He was handsome too, with pale hair, thickly silvered at the temples, a high-bridged nose and a well-shaped, determined mouth. His expression was one of cold ill-humour, and when he glanced up at her, still poised ridiculously on the chair, Abigail saw that his eyes were blue. It struck her with something of a shock that they were regarding her with dislike.
She got down off the chair, the flowers clutched in one hand, hastily put them down on one of the little tables which cluttered the room, crammed her feet into her shoes and reached the bedside at the same time as the two men. Doctor Vincent introduced the professor, adding a corollary of his talents, and Mrs Morgan, suddenly interested, shook hands. ‘And our nurse,’ went on Doctor Vincent, ‘arrived from England today and is already, I see, attending to the patient’s comfort. Miss Trent, this is Professor van Wijkelen, of whom I spoke.’
She held out her hand and he shook it perfunctorily and said nothing, only looked at her again with the same cold dislike, before sitting on the side of Mrs Morgan’s bed and saying, ‘Now, Mrs Morgan, will you tell me all your troubles, and perhaps Doctor Vincent and I can help you to get well again.’
His voice was charming, deep and quiet and compelling, and Mrs Morgan was nothing loath. Her recital, with various deflections concerning her own personal courage in the face of grave illness, her fears for the loss of her good looks and the fact that she had been twice widowed, took a long time. The professor sat quietly, not interrupting her at all, his eyes upon her face while she talked. He seemed completely absorbed and so, to his credit, did Doctor Vincent, who, Abigail guessed, must have heard the tale at least once already. She herself stood quietly by the bed, a well-trained mouse of a girl, her eyes, too, on her patient, although she would very much have preferred to fix them upon the professor.
Mrs Morgan finished at length and the professor said, ‘Quite, Mrs Morgan,’ and went on to ask her several questions. Finally, when he was satisfied with the answers, he turned to Abigail and asked her to prepare Mrs Morgan for his examination. He asked courteously in a voice of ice; Abigail wondered what had happened to sour him and take all the warmth from his voice as she bent to the task of getting Mrs Morgan modestly uncovered while the two men retired to the window and muttered together in their own language.
‘He’s ducky,’ whispered Mrs Morgan, and then sharply, ‘Don’t disarrange my hair, honey!’
She lay back, looking, to speak the truth, gorgeous. Abigail, obedient to her patient’s wish, had been careful of the hair; she had also arranged her patient’s wispy trifle of a bedjacket to its greatest advantage. Now she stood back and said briskly, ‘Ready when you are, sir,’ and watched while the professor conducted his examination. He prodded and poked gently with his large, square hands while he gazed in an abstracted fashion at the wall before him. At length, when he had finished and Abigail had rearranged Mrs Morgan, he said: ‘I think that there will be no need for an operation, but to be quite sure there are several tests which it will be necessary to do, and I am afraid that they must be done in hospital.’ He paused to allow Mrs Morgan to pull a pretty little face and exclaim:
‘Oh, no, Professor—I was so utterly miserable when I was there just a week ago, that’s why I engaged Nurse Trent here.’
‘In that case, may I suggest that you take her with you to hospital? She can attend you during the day and I am sure that we shall be able to find an English-speaking nurse for night duty. I should suppose that three or four days should be sufficient, then you can return here to await the result of the tests. If they are satisfactory, a week or so should suffice to see you on your feet again and well enough to return home.’
‘If you say so, Professor,’ Mrs Morgan’s voice was just sufficiently plaintive, ‘though I’m sure I don’t know how I shall get on in that hospital of yours. Still, as you say, if I take Nurse with me, I daresay I’ll be able to bear a few days.’
She smiled at him after this somewhat frank speech, but he didn’t smile in return, merely inclined his head gravely and offered his hand.
‘You’ll come and see me again, Professor?’ Mrs Morgan was still smiling. ‘I sure feel better already, you’ve a most reassuring way with you.’
If the professor was flattered by this remark he gave no sign. ‘Thank you, Mrs Morgan. I think that there is no necessity to see you again until you enter hospital. I will arrange that as soon as possible and you will of course see me there.’
‘I look forward to that—and be sure that I have a private room. I’m so sensitive, I can’t bear the sights and sounds of hospital, Professor.’
He walked to the door and then turned to face her with Doctor Vincent beside him. ‘I feel sure that Doctor Vincent will arrange everything to your liking, Mrs Morgan, and you will have your nurse to shield you from the—er—sights and sounds you so much dread.’ His smile was fleeting and reluctant, a concession to good manners, and it didn’t last long enough to include Abigail. He nodded curtly to her as he went away.
Surprisingly, he came the following day, late in the afternoon when Abigail had returned from her few hours off and was sitting with her patient, reading the New York Herald Tribune to her. She read very nicely in her quiet voice, sitting upright in a truly hideous reproduction Morris chair. She had enjoyed her afternoon off, and wished that her patient lived in one of the old houses beside the canals, because she would have dearly loved to see inside one of them. The flat in the Apollolaan was comfortable to the point of luxury, but all the same, she wouldn’t have liked to live in it for ever, but the brick houses with their gabled roofs reflected in the still waters of the grachten—they were a different matter; it would be wonderful to live in their serene fastness.
The morning had been successful too; Mrs Morgan seemed to like her, for she had chatted animatedly while Abigail performed the daily nursing chores, talking at great length about Professor van Wijkelen. ‘A darling man, Nurse,’ she mused. ‘I must find out more about him—such good looks and such elegance.’ She smiled playfully at Abigail. ‘Now mind, dear, and tell me anything you should hear about him. You’re bound to find out something in the hospital, aren’t you?’
Abigail had said that probably she would, provided she could find someone who could speak English. She had gone to lunch with Mr and Mrs Goldberg after that, and they had asked her a great many questions about her patient and seemed, she thought, a little relieved that dear Clara was to leave them for a day or two. Without someone in constant attendance, she must have put quite a strain on their good-natured hospitality.
Mrs Goldberg had asked her kindly if she had everything she needed and to be sure and say if she hadn’t and then told her to hurry out while she had the chance. And Abigail had, wrapped in her well-cut but not new tweed coat against the damp cold winds of Amsterdam. She hadn’t been able to do much in two hours, but at least she knew where she would go when next she was free; the complexity of grachten, tree-lined, their steely waters overlooked by the tall, quaintly shaped houses on either side of them, needed time to explore. There was no point in looking at the shops, not until she had some money to spend, but there was enough to see without spending more than the price of a tram fare.
The knock on the bedroom door had taken them both by surprise. Mr and Mrs Goldberg were both out, neither Abigail nor her patient had heard the maid go to the front door. She came in now and said in her basic English, ‘A person for the Zuster.’
Abigail put down the paper, which she was a little tired of anyway, saying: ‘Oh, that will be instructions from the hospital as to when we’re to go, I expect. I’ll go and see about it, shall I?’ and followed the maid out of the room. The visitor was in the sitting room. Abigail opened the door and went in and came to a standstill when she saw the professor standing before the window, staring out.
‘Oh, it’s you!’ she declared, quite forgetful of her manners because of her surprise, and was affronted when he answered irritably:
‘And pray why should it not be I, Nurse? Doctor Vincent has been called out unexpectedly and finds himself unable to call, and I had to come this way.’
‘Oh, you don’t have to explain,’ Abigail said kindly, and went on in a matter-of-fact voice, ‘You’ll want to see Mrs Morgan.’
‘No, Nurse, I do not. I wish merely to inform you that there will be a bed in the private wing tomorrow afternoon. Be good enough to bring your patient to the hospital at three o’clock. An ambulance will fetch you—you will need to bring with you sufficient for three days, four perhaps. Be good enough to see that Mrs Morgan fasts from midday tomorrow so that no time is wasted.’
He spoke shortly and she wondered if and why he was annoyed, perhaps because he had had to undertake Doctor Vincent’s errand, although surely he had a sufficiency of helpers to see to such mundane things as beds … He looked very arrogant and ill-humoured standing there, staring at her. She said briskly, ‘Very well, sir—and now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go back to my patient.’
He looked faintly surprised, although he didn’t bother to reply. Only as she started for the door did he ask, ‘What is your name?’
She barely paused. ‘Trent, sir.’
He said impatiently, ‘I am aware of that—we met yesterday, if you care to remember. What else besides Trent?’
It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him to mind his own business, but she wasn’t given to unkindness and perhaps he had some very good reason for looking so irritable all the time. ‘Abigail,’ she offered, and watched for his smile; most people smiled when they discovered her name; it was old-fashioned and quaint. But he didn’t smile.
‘Why?’
‘I was born on a Saturday,’ she began, a little worried because he wasn’t English and might not understand. ‘And Abigail …’ She paused. ‘It’s rather a silly reason and I don’t suppose you would know …’
He looked more annoyed than ever, his thick almost colourless brows drawn together in a straight line above a nose which to her appeared disdainful.
‘You should suppose nothing. I am sufficiently acquainted with your English verses—Saturday’s child has to work for her living, eh? and Abigail was a term used some hundreds of years ago to denote a serving woman, was it not?’
‘How clever of you,’ said Abigail warmly, and was rewarded with another frown.
‘And were your parents so sure that you would be forced to work for your living that they gave you this name?’
She said tight-lipped, because the conversation was becoming painful:
‘It was a joke between them. You will excuse me now, sir?’
She left him standing there and went back to her patient, who, on being told who the visitor was, showed her displeasure at not receiving a visit, although she brightened again when Abigail pointed out that she would see a good deal of him in hospital once she was settled in there. They spent the rest of the day quite happily, with Abigail opening and shutting cupboards and drawers in order to display various garments to her patient, who, however ill she felt, intended to look as glamorous as possible during her stay in hospital. It was much later, when Abigail had packed a few things for herself that, cosily dressing-gowned, she sat down before her dressing-table to brush her hair for the night. She brushed it steadily for some time, deep in thought, and she wasn’t thinking about herself, or her patient or Bollinger, but of Professor van Wijkelen. He was the handsomest man she had ever seen, also the most bad-tempered, but there had to be a reason for the look of dislike which he had given her when they had met—as though he had come prepared to dislike her, thought Abigail. She finished plaiting the rich thickness of her mousy hair and stared at her face in the mirror. Plain she might be, but in an inoffensive manner—her teeth didn’t stick out, she didn’t squint, her nose was completely unassuming; there was, in fact, nothing to cause offence. Yet he had stared at her as though she had mortally offended him. She put the brush away and padded over to the bed, thinking that she would very much like to get to know him better, not because he was so good-looking; he looked interesting as well, and for some reason she was unable to explain she found herself making excuses for his abrupt manner, even his dislike of her. She got into bed wondering sleepily what he was doing at that moment—the idea that he was a happily married man dispelled sleep for a few minutes until she decided that he didn’t look married. She slept on that surprisingly happy thought.
CHAPTER TWO
THE HOSPITAL WAS hidden away behind the thickly clustered old houses and narrow lanes of the city. It was itself old, although once inside, Abigail saw that like so many of the older hospitals in England, it had a modernised interior despite the long bleak corridors and small dark passages and bare enclosed yards which so many of its windows looked out upon. Mrs Morgan’s room was on the third floor, in the private wing, and although small, it was well furnished and the view from its window of the city around was a splendid one. Abigail got her patient safely into bed, tucked in the small lace-covered pillows Mrs Morgan had decided she couldn’t manage without, changed her quilted dressing-gown for a highly becoming bedjacket, rearranged her hair, found her the novel she was reading, unpacked her case and after leaving the bell within reach of her, went to find the Ward Sister.
Zuster van Rijn was elderly, round, cosy and grey-haired, with a lovely smile and a command of the English language which Abigail found quite remarkable. They sat together in the little office, drinking the coffee which one of the nurses had brought them, while Zuster van Rijn read her patient’s notes and charts and finally observed:
‘She does not seem too bad. Professor van Wijkelen never operates unless it is necessary—he is far too good for that, but she must have the tests which have been ordered—she can have the X-ray this afternoon and the blood test—tomorrow the test meal—just something milky this evening for her diet. You’re to stay with her, the professor tells me.’
‘Yes, Mrs Morgan is a little nervous.’
Zuster van Rijn smiled faintly. ‘Yes,’ her voice was dry. ‘There’s a room ready for you in the Nurses’ Home—would you like to go there now? There is nothing to do for Mrs Morgan for half an hour and one of the nurses can answer the bell. I will tell Zuster de Wit to go over with you.’
Abigail went back to her patient, to explain and collect her bag, and then followed the nurse down one flight of stairs, over a covered bridge, spanning what looked like a narrow lane of warehouses, and so into the Nurses’ Home. Zuster de Wit hurried her along a long passage and then a short one to stop half way down it.
‘Here,’ she said, and smiled as she flung open a door in a row of doors. The room was comfortable although a little dark, for its window overlooked another part of the hospital, but the curtains were gay and it was warm and cheerful. Abigail smiled in return and said, ‘How nice. Thank you,’ and Zuster de Wit smiled again, said ‘Dag’ and hurried away. Obviously she had been told to waste no time. Abigail, listening to her rapidly disappearing feet, hoped that she would be able to find her own way back to the ward again as she began to unpack her things. She had bought only a modicum of clothes—mostly uniform and her thick winter coat and a skirt and sweater, boots and the knitted beret and scarf she had made for herself during the weeks she had nursed her mother. It took only a few minutes to put these away and another minute or so to powder her nose and tuck her hair more tidily under her cap. It was almost four o’clock, as she shut the door she wondered about tea—perhaps they didn’t have it; there were several things she would have to find out before the day was over. She went back over the bridge and found her way to her patient’s room, to find her asleep.
Working in an Amsterdam hospital was almost exactly the same as working in her own London hospital; she had discovered this fact by the end of the day. Once she had become used to addressing even the most junior nurses as ‘Zuster’ and discovered that she was expected to say ‘Als t’U blift’ to anyone she gave something to, and ‘Dank U wel’ each time she was given something, be it instructions—mostly in sign language—or a thermometer or a holder for the potted plant someone had sent her patient, she felt a little less worried about the problem of language. She had had to go without her tea, of course—they had had it at three o’clock, but she went down to supper with the other nurses at half past six; a substantial meal of pea soup, pork with a variety of vegetables, followed by what Abigail took to be custard and as much coffee as she could drink.
She went back to the office to give her report and then returned to sit with Mrs Morgan who was feeling a little apprehensive about the test meal. At half past eight, just before the night nurse was due on duty, a house doctor came to see the new patient and a few minutes later Doctor Vincent. He listened patiently to her small complainings, soothed her nicely, recommended her to do as Abigail told her, and went away again, and presently when the night nurse came and Abigail had given her a report too, she went herself, over the bridge to the Nurses’ Home and to her room.
She hadn’t been in it for more than a minute when there was a knock on the door and the same nurses she had seen at supper took her off to their sitting room to watch TV which, although she was tired, Abigail found rather fun because Paul Temple was on and it was amusing to watch it for a second time and listen to the dubbed voices talking what to her was nonsense. For so the Dutch language seemed to her; she had been unable to make head or tail of it—a few words and phrases, it was true, she had been quick enough to pick up, but for the most part she had had to fall back on basic English and signs, all taken in very good part by the other nurses. It had been a great relief to find that the night nurse spoke English quite well; enough to understand the report and discuss Mrs Morgan’s condition with Abigail, and what was more important, Mrs Morgan seemed disposed to like her.
After Paul Temple she was carried off once more, this time to one of the nurses’ rooms to drink coffee before finally going to her own room. She slept soundly and got up the next morning feeling happier than she had done for some time; it was on her way down to breakfast that she realised that the uplift to her spirits was largely due to the fact that she would most probably see the professor during the course of the day.
Her hope was to be gratified; he passed her on the corridor as she made her way to her patient’s room after breakfast. She saw him coming towards her down its length and watched with faint amusement as the scurrying nurses got out of his way. When he drew level with her she wished him a cheerful good morning and in reply received a cold look of dislike and faint surprise, as though he were not in the habit of being wished a good day. Her disappointment was so sharp that she took refuge in ill temper too and muttered out loud as she sped along, ‘Oh, well, be like that!’
She found her patient in good spirits; she had slept well, the night nurse had understood her and she had understood the night nurse, and the Ryle’s tube had been passed and the test meal almost finished. The night nurse, giving the report to Abigail in the privacy of the nurses’ station further down the corridor, confided in her correct, sparse English that she herself had enjoyed a quiet night and had got a great deal of knitting done. She produced the garment in question—a pullover of vast proportions and of an overpowering canary yellow. They had their heads together over the intricacies of its pattern when the professor said from behind them:
‘If I might have the attention of you two ladies—provided you can spare the time?’ he added nastily.
The Dutch girl whipped round in much the same fashion as a thief caught in the act of robbing a safe, but Abigail, made of sterner stuff and unconscious of wrongdoing, merely folded the pullover tidily and said: ‘Certainly, sir,’ which simple remark seemed to annoy him very much, for he glared at her quite savagely.
‘You are both on duty, I take it?’ he asked.
‘No, me,’ said Abigail ungrammatically in her pleasant voice. ‘We’ve just discussed the report and Night Nurse is going off duty.’
‘When I need to be reminded of the nurses’ routine in hospital, I shall say so, Nurse Trent.’
She gave him a kindly, thoughtful look, her previous temper quite forgotten. Probably he was one of those unfortunate people who were always ill-tempered in the early morning. She found that she was prepared, more anxious to make excuses for him.
‘I didn’t intend to annoy you, sir,’ she pointed out to him reasonably, and was rewarded with a sour look and a compression of his well-shaped mouth.
‘The test meal,’ he snapped, ‘when is it complete?’
She looked at her watch. ‘The last specimen is due to be withdrawn in fifteen minutes’ time, sir.’
‘If the patient doesn’t tire of waiting for your return and pull the Ryle’s tube out for herself.’
‘Oh, no,’ said Abigail seriously, ‘she’d never do that—you see, I explained how important it was for her to do exactly as you wish. She has a great opinion of you.’
Just for a moment she thought that he was going to laugh, but she must have been mistaken, for all he said was, ‘I want Mrs Morgan in theatre at noon precisely for gastroscopy. The anaesthetist will be along to write her up. See that she is ready, Nurse Trent.’
He turned to the night nurse, who had been silent all this while, and spoke to her with cold courtesy in his own language. She smiled at him uncertainly, looked at Abigail and flew off down the corridor, leaving behind her the strong impression that she was delighted to be free of their company. Abigail picked up the report book and prepared to go too, but was stopped by the professor’s voice, very silky.
‘A moment, Nurse Trent. I am interested to know what it was you said in the corridor just now.’
She wished she could have looked wide-eyed and innocent, or been so pretty that he really wouldn’t want an answer to his question. She would have to tell him, and probably, as he seemed to dislike her so much already, he would say that he wanted another nurse to work for him and she would have to go back to England. Did one get paid in such circumstances? she wondered, and was startled when he asked, ‘What are you thinking about? I assure you it is of no use you inventing some excuse.’
‘I’m not inventing anything. What I said was,’ she took a deep breath, ‘”Oh, well, be like that.’”
‘That is what I thought you said. May I ask if you are in the habit of addressing the consultants in your own hospital in such a fashion?’
She considered carefully before she answered him. ‘No, I can’t remember ever doing so before, but then, you see, they always said good morning.’
She studied his face as she spoke; perhaps she had gone a little too far, but she didn’t like being treated in such a high-handed fashion. He looked very angry indeed—she waited for the outburst she felt sure would come and was surprised when all he said, through a tight mouth, was:
‘Young woman, you disturb me excessively,’ and stalked away, leaving Abigail with her eyes opened very wide, and her mouth open too.
She didn’t see him again until she entered the theatre and she thought it unlikely that he would notice her, disguised as she was in theatre gown of voluminous size and nothing visible of her face, only her nice eyes above the mask.
The morning’s work had gone exactly to plan. It was precisely noon. Theatre Sister and two nurses were there and of course the anaesthetist—there was to be no general anaesthetic, but Mrs Morgan had had a pre-med and would need a local anaesthetic. He was a nice sort of man, Abigail thought; his English was fluent if a little difficult to understand and he had smiled kindly at her. Mrs Morgan, her hand held in Abigail’s comforting grasp, was dozing in her drug-induced sleep; she had joked a little about it before they went to theatre because she would miss seeing Professor van Wijkelen, and Abigail had consoled her with the prospect of further visits from him, for there were still one or two more tests to carry out, though once the professor had done the gastroscopy and had made up his mind whether he needed to operate or not, there wasn’t much more to be done.
Abigail arranged the blanket over her patient, turning it down below her shoulders so that it wouldn’t get in the surgeon’s way once he started. Mrs Morgan made a little whimpering sound and opened her eyes, and Abigail said instantly in a soothing voice, ‘It’s all right, Mrs Morgan, the professor is just coming.’
He was in fact there, standing behind her, talking quietly to Sister. He finished what he was saying and went closer to his patient, ignoring Abigail completely—something she had expected.
He spoke quietly to his patient. ‘You feel sleepy, don’t you, Mrs Morgan? We are going to spray your throat now and it will feel numb, but you will feel nothing else—a little uncomfortable perhaps, but that is all. It will take only a short time. Your head will be lifted over a pillow now and I am going to ask you to open your mouth when I say so.’
The small examination went well and Mrs Morgan, whom Abigail had expected to be rather difficult, didn’t seem to mind at all when the professor inserted the gastroscope and peered down it, his great height doubled, his brows drawn together in concentration. At length he said, ‘That will do. Kindly take her back to the ward, Nurse.’
Which Abigail did, to spend a rather trying few hours because Mrs Morgan was under the impression that the local anaesthetic would wear off in ten minutes or so, and when it didn’t she was first annoyed and then frightened. Abigail, explaining over and over again that the numbness would disappear quickly and that no, Mrs Morgan couldn’t have a drink just yet, longed for an hour or so off duty. It was already three o’clock; she had been relieved at dinner time, but no one had said a word about her off-duty. Probably the Ward Sister thought that she wouldn’t mind as long as someone relieved her for a cup of tea.
The door opened and she looked up hopefully, unaware that her face plainly showed her disappointment at the sight of the professor standing there, for he certainly hadn’t come to release her from her duties. She got to her feet, wondering why he stared so, and fetched the chart for him to study. He hadn’t spoken at all and since he seemed to like it that way, she hadn’t either. She had half expected to hear more about their morning’s meeting, but now she rather thought that he wasn’t going to do anything more about it. She took the chart back again and stood quietly while he spoke briefly to Mrs Morgan. Presently he turned away from the bed. ‘Nurse, I shall want another blood count done and the barium meal will be done tomorrow at two o’clock. Attend to the usual preparations, please. I can find nothing very wrong, but I shall need confirmation of that before I make my final decision.’
She said, ‘Yes, Professor,’ and admired him discreetly. Forty or more, she concluded, and unhappy—though I don’t suppose he knows it.
His voice, cutting a swathe through her half-formed thoughts, asked:
‘You are comfortable here, Nurse? Everyone is kind to you? You have your free time?’
‘Yes, thank you,’ she answered so quickly that he said at once, ‘Today?’
‘Well, not yet, but I’m perfectly all right. Mrs Morgan is my patient, isn’t she, and the ward is very busy. I’m quite happy.’
He said surprisingly, ‘Are you? I should have supposed otherwise, although I daresay you do your best to disguise the fact.’
She was appalled, and when had he looked at her long enough to even notice? ‘I—I …’ she began, and was instantly stopped by his bland, ‘No need to excuse yourself, Nurse Trent—we all have our worries and sorrows, do we not—and never as important as we think they are.’
Abigail went brightly pink. She blushed seldom, but when she did, she coloured richly from her neck to the roots of her hair. He watched her now with a detached interest, nodded briefly, and went away.
She was relieved shortly after that and after a cup of tea in the dining room she tore into her clothes and went out into the city. The night nurse had explained how she could get to the shops in a few minutes; now she followed the little lanes between the old houses, pausing frequently to make sure that she could find her way back again, and came all at once into a brightly lighted street, crowded with people and lined with shops. She spent half an hour peering into their windows, working out the prices and deciding what she would buy when she had some money. That wouldn’t be just yet; as soon as she had her first pay she would have to send it to poor old Bollinger. She wasn’t happy about his room—it had looked cold and bare and although the landlady seemed kind enough she hadn’t looked too clean, and supposing he were to become ill, who would look after him? She stood in the middle of Kalverstraat, suddenly not sure if she should have left him.
Mrs Morgan stayed in hospital for another three days, becoming progressively more cheerful because it seemed unlikely that she would need an operation after all. Besides, the professor visited her each day and she made no secret of her liking for him. He spent ten minutes or so listening gravely while she explained some new symptom she feared she might have, and then courteously contradicted her, impervious to her undoubted charm and quite deaf to her suggestions that he might, in the not too distant future, pay her a visit at her Long Island home. He seldom spoke to Abigail and when he looked at her it was with a coldness which she admitted to herself upset her a great deal more than it should have done.
They went home on the sixth day, this time in Mr Goldberg’s Buick motor car; the professor had paid a visit the evening before and had stayed a little longer than usual, reassuring Mrs Morgan as to her future health, and had bidden her goodbye with his usual cold politeness, nodding briefly to Abigail as he went away. On her way off duty, half an hour later, she had seen him in the main ward, doing a round with his registrars and housemen, Sister and attendant satellites of students, nurses, physiotherapist and social worker. He looked very important but completely unconscious of the fact, an aspect of his character which she found strangely endearing.
The days following passed pleasantly enough. Mrs Morgan was out of bed now, although she preferred to keep to her room, walking a little and talking incessantly about her flight to the States, which she anticipated with all the impatience of someone who always had what they wanted when they wanted it. Abigail was impatient too—although she damped it down—for pay-day. She had had several letters from Bolly and from the sparse information they contained as to how he fared, she guessed that life was being difficult for him. She had already decided that she would send almost all her money to him, for she was almost certain that Mrs Morgan would ask her to stay another week, perhaps longer, and she didn’t want him to wait any longer for it. The moment she got back to London she would go to the agency again and ask for another job. She reviewed her plans almost daily, and behind all this careful scheming was the thought that she would never see the professor again once she had left Holland. A ridiculous thing to worry about, she told herself scornfully, for she very much doubted if he would notice if she were there or not. She dismissed him firmly from her thoughts and went out each day, exploring Amsterdam.
It was on the morning that she was due to be paid that Mrs Morgan asked her if she would stay another week. ‘I know I don’t really need you, honey,’ she said, ‘but you are such a comfort to have around, and Dolly and Eddy don’t need to worry about me at all. I’ve booked a flight for next week—a week today—if you would stay and see me safely away?’
She opened the crocodile handbag with the gold fittings which looked almost too heavy for her to carry and took out an envelope. ‘Here’s your salary, honey—I got Eddy to see to it for me. You’d rather have the cash, I’m sure. I bet you’ve got your eye on something pretty to buy with it.’
Abigail agreed pleasantly. She had grown quite fond of her patient while she had been looking after her and she saw no point in disturbing her complacent belief that the rest of the world lived in the same comfortable circumstances as herself. She put the envelope in her pocket and picked up the guide book of Holland which she had been reading to Mrs Morgan. Later, when she was free that afternoon, she would go to the post office and send the money to Bollinger, and perhaps now that she knew when she would be finished with the case, she should write to the agency and ask if they had anything else she could go straight to. The problem remained at the back of her mind while she read aloud about the delights of Avifauna and the best way of getting there, she was interrupted half way through by her companion telling her with enthusiasm that she intended to return. ‘Because,’ said Mrs Morgan, ‘this is a sweet little country and I must say some of the people I’ve met are well worth cultivating.’ She giggled happily and Abigail, who knew that she was talking about Professor van Wijkelen, smiled politely and wondered what success she would have in that quarter.
With her patient tucked up for her afternoon nap, Abigail was free to go to her room and open the envelope. There was two weeks’ salary inside and her fare—but only her single fare. She had expected to be given the return fare and had neglected to ask anyone about it. Perhaps she was only entitled to half her travelling expenses; on the other hand, Mrs Morgan might give it to her with her next week’s pay. She put the fare away in her bag, popped the rest into the envelope she had ready and got into her outdoor clothes.
It was cold outside and bleak with the bleakness of January. The clouds had a yellow tinge to them and the wind was piercingly cold. She hurried to the post office some streets away, where there were clerks who spoke English and would understand her when she asked for a registered envelope.
The post office was warm inside. The walk had given her eyes a sparkle and put some colour into her cheeks. She had perched her knitted beret on top of her head and wound its matching scarf carelessly round her throat. She took her gloves off and blew on her cold fingers and went up to the counter.
It took a little while to understand the clerk and then she was so disappointed that she could hardly believe him. She had taken it for granted that she could send either the cash or a money order to Bolly and it seemed she had been hopelessly at fault—she could do no such thing. Go to a bank, suggested the clerk helpfully, where there would be forms to be filled in and a certain amount of delay. But she wanted Bolly to have the money now—within the next day or two. If she waited until she went back herself that was a whole week away—besides, she had promised Bolly. She sighed and the clerk sighed in sympathy and she said, ‘Well, thank you very much for explaining. I should have found out earlier, shouldn’t I?’
‘Can I help?’ The professor—she would have known his icy voice anywhere. She whirled round to face him.
‘Oh, how funny to meet you here, sir. I don’t think so, thank you. It’s just something that was my own silly fault anyway.’
‘Why should it be funny, Nurse Trent? I also write letters, you know.’
‘Yes, I’m sure you do, only—only I should have thought that you would have had someone to post them.’
‘Indeed? I am not particularly interested in your suppositions, but I find this one extraordinary. How can I help you?’
Persistent man, he wasn’t going to take no for an answer. She explained in a matter-of-fact voice and apologised again for being stupid.
‘Why should you be stupid?’ he asked irritably. ‘You were not to know before you asked. How much money did you want to send?’
‘Forty pounds. No—I’ve got to take some off …’ she began to reckon twelve and a half per cent of forty pounds in her head and the amount came different each time she did it. Finally she asked, because he showed signs of impatience, ‘How much is twelve and a half per cent of forty pounds?’
‘Five pounds. Why?’
‘Well, that’s what I have to pay the agency for as long as I work for them.’
‘Iniquitous! It so happens that I am going over to London this evening. I will take the money, since you seem so anxious to send it.’
She stared at him, astonished. ‘But you don’t even … you’re very kind, but I couldn’t trouble you. I shall be going back myself in a week’s time.’
The professor tweaked her out of the queue forming behind her.
‘Ah, yes—I should be obliged if you would remain in Amsterdam for a further few weeks. I have a patient upon whom I shall be operating in ten days’ time, and he will need a special nurse in hospital and probably to accompany him home when he is sufficiently recovered. Your usual fee will be paid you.’
Abigail’s voice sounded a little too loud in her own ears. ‘But you don’t …’ She stopped—what had his personal opinion of her got to do with it anyway? He wanted a nurse and she was available. She answered him with her usual calm good sense, ‘Yes, Professor, I should be quite willing to stay on for as long as you require me.’
He nodded carelessly, as though he had known all along that she was going to say yes.
‘Very well, we will consider the matter settled,’ and when she looked at him it was to find him smiling. Perhaps it was because she had never seen him smile that her heart lurched against her ribs and her breath caught in her throat. It transformed his handsome face into one of such charm that if he had at that moment suggested that she should remain in Holland for the rest of her life, she would probably have agreed without further thought. But her idea wasn’t put to the test; the smile vanished, leaving him looking more impatient than ever.
‘Give me the address of the person who is to receive the money,’ he suggested, ‘and I will see that it reaches him—or her.’
‘Him,’ said Abigail, and would have liked to tell him about Bolly, but quite obviously her companion was anxious to be gone. She handed him the envelope with the letter inside and the forty pounds hastily pushed in with it. She had forgotten about the agency fee, but he hadn’t.
‘Twelve and a half per cent?’ he wanted to know.
He really was in a hurry. ‘I’ll—I’ll take it out of my pay next week. You’re sure …?’
He interrupted without apology, ‘Stop fussing, Miss Trent.’ He stuffed the envelope into a pocket with a nonchalance, Abigail thought vexedly, of a man who found forty pounds chicken feed, wished her a curt goodbye and walked away. She began to walk back to the flat, her head bent against the sneering wind, telling herself that the reason she felt so happy was because Bolly would have the money by the following evening, or at the very least, the morning after.
The professor came to see Mrs Morgan three days later. He paid his visit while Abigail was out for her afternoon walk and left no message for her at all. It wasn’t until the evening previous to Mrs Morgan’s departure that he came again. Abigail was packing her patient’s clothes, surrounded by tissue paper, orderly piles of undies, innumerable hats and an assortment of suitcases. Evidently Mrs Morgan never worried about excess baggage. That lady was reclining on the couch, directing operations; she looked very well and remarkably attractive, which was more than Abigail felt, for her head ached and her usually neat hair was a little untidy, nor had she had the time to do anything to her face for some time, and over and above these annoyances she was worried about Bolly; she had had a cheerful letter from him, thanking her for the money, but she sensed that he was hiding something from her. She was thinking about it now and frowning—she was still frowning when there was a knock on the door and Doctor Vincent and the professor walked in. They both wished her a good evening and she flushed a little under the professor’s brief, unfriendly glance, very conscious that she wasn’t looking her modest best. They stayed perhaps ten minutes, made their farewells and started for the door. But this time Professor van Wijkelen made a detour and came to a halt by her and her pile of luggage.
‘I understand that you will be taking Mrs Morgan to Schiphol tomorrow morning. You will be fetched from there and taken straight to the hospital. Perhaps you can arrange to have your luggage with you.’ His eyes strayed over the ordered chaos around them. ‘I trust you have a good deal less than this.’
‘One case,’ Abigail told him briefly, and he nodded. ‘I will leave a message for you at the hospital tomorrow,’ he stated. ‘Good evening, Nurse.’
He had gone before she could thank him for posting her letter.
Mrs Morgan was actually bidding Abigail goodbye at Schiphol when she interrupted herself to exclaim, ‘There, I knew there was something, honey! I’ve clean forgot to give you your money.’ She made to open her unwieldy bag, but it was too late; a smiling official indicated the passenger conveyor belt which would take her one stage nearer the plane. ‘I’ll post it to you,’ she called, waved and smiled and nodded, and was borne swiftly away; so easy for her to say it, thought Abigail a little forlornly, but where would she send the money to? Mrs Morgan knew that she was going to another job, but she hadn’t asked for any details and Abigail hadn’t volunteered any. Perhaps she would send the money to the agency. If so, would the severe woman who had interviewed her send it on, or would she keep it and expect Abigail to call for it? And what about the rest of her fare—she hadn’t had it yet.
She stood pondering, pushed to and fro by the hurrying people around her. She had been silly; she should have asked for her salary and her fare sooner. But she hadn’t liked to, even though the money was rightly hers. And now she had landed herself with only a few pounds. Supposing the professor had changed his mind about employing her for his next patient? She had been rash enough to buy herself a pair of shoes the day before, and now she was left with less than her fare to England. She moved at last, back to the reception area to fetch her case. She had been foolish twice over; the professor had said that she would be fetched from the airport, but how was she to know who was looking for her? Supposing they couldn’t find her and she was left—supposing they forgot all about her, supposing … Her gloomy thoughts were cut short by the professor’s voice. She hadn’t seen him, but here he was beside her, taking her case from her as relief as well as delight flooded through her, although her quiet ‘Good morning, Professor,’ was uttered in her usual voice. She received an ill-tempered grunt in reply and a brief, ‘Come along, Nurse,’ as he made for the door.
She trotted beside him because otherwise she could never have kept up with him, and to lose him now would be unthinkable. There were a great many cars outside and she wondered which of them was his.
He stopped in front of a black Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow, sleekly and unobtrusively perfect among the other cars, opened its doors, told her to get in with the cold courtesy she had come to believe was the only alternative to his ill-humour, and went to put her case in the boot. He didn’t speak when he got in beside her, and was still silent as he edged the car away from the crowded bustle of the airport and on to the main road. They were tearing along the motorway to the capital when she ventured helpfully:
‘I expect you came yourself so that you could save time telling me about the patient.’
She looked at him as she spoke and he turned to meet her gaze briefly. She wished that he would smile again, but he didn’t, although when he did speak she had the impression that somewhere, deep down inside him, he was laughing. Imagination, she told herself roundly; why should he laugh?
‘A doctor,’ he stated flatly. ‘Professor de Wit, seventy years old. He’s to have a gastroenterostomy—CA, of course, but everything’s in his favour, he’s got a sound heart and chest and a great desire to live. He is to have a room in the private wing and you will be working under Zuster van Rijn with whom you will arrange your off-duty, please.’
Having thus given her the bare bones of the case he fell silent once more, and Abigail, not knowing if he was occupied with the intricacies of the day’s operating list, forbore from disturbing him. It was only when he drew up in front of the hospital entrance and called to the porter to come and collect her case that she said:
‘Thank you for posting my letter. I heard from—that is, it arrived safely. I’m very grateful to you.’
He looked at her with quick annoyance. ‘There’s no need to say any more about it,’ he stated with such finality that she felt snubbed, so that she too was annoyed. ‘I shan’t,’ she told him crisply. ‘Obviously gratitude and thanks are wasted upon you, sir.’
She walked briskly into the hospital, not waiting to see what the porter was going to do about her case. She was half way across the width of the entrance hall when she was amazed to hear the professor laughing. It was a deep bellow and sounded perfectly genuine.
It was surprising to her how quickly she slipped back into the routine of hospital. She had been given the same room again and this time it was so much easier because she knew some of the nurses and they greeted her as an old friend. Zuster van Rijn seemed glad to see her again too; they were short-staffed on the surgical side, she told Abigail, and specialling could be awkward unless there were enough nurses.
‘Will you work as you did before,’ she asked, ‘and take an afternoon off? I know it’s not quite fair that you shouldn’t work shift hours as the other girls do, but that way I can spare a nurse to take over while you’re off duty. There will be the same night nurse as you have already worked with, and you shall have your days off, of course, but how or when I do not know at the moment. You are content?’
‘Quite content,’ Abigail told her. Days off didn’t matter, not for the first week at any rate, for she hadn’t any money to spend. The problem of how to get the money over to Bolly was looming heavily again too; she had done nothing about it because she had expected to return to England, now she would have to start all over again. She dismissed her problems and followed Sister, prepared to meet her patient.
She liked him on sight. He was lying in bed and although his face was pinched and white with his illness, he was still a remarkably good-looking old man. Excepting for a thick fringe of white hair, he was bald, but the fringe encircled his face as well in rich profusion and his blue eyes were youthful and sharp. She shook his hand—gently—because she could see that he was an ill man, and despite his alert expression and merry eyes, probably in pain as well.
Zuster van Rijn left them together after a few minutes and Professor de Wit said, ‘Pull up a chair, my dear, and let us get to know each other. I believe Dominic wishes me to spend a week in bed before he operates, physiotherapy and blood transfusions and all the other fringe benefits of his calling which he so generously offers.’
Abigail laughed with him. So the professor’s name was Dominic—she stored the little piece of information away, though what good it would do her she had yet to discover. She listened to the old man’s placid talk in his slow, almost perfect English and by means of gentle questions of her own found out that he slept badly, ate almost nothing, had lost his wife twenty years previously, had a doting housekeeper to look after him, and a dog and a cat to keep him company, as well as a half-tamed hedgehog, a family of rabbits and a pet raven. They were discussing a mutual dislike of caged birds when Professor van Wijkelen came in.
The two men, she saw at once, were old friends. It was also apparent that the older man trusted the younger completely. He lay listening quietly while the professor told him exactly what he was going to do and why.
‘It sounds most promising, Dominic. I gather I am to be a new man by the time you have finished with me.’
‘Shall we say soundly repaired, and fit for another ten or fifteen years—and that’s a conservative estimate.’
‘And what does Nurse say?’ It was her patient who spoke.
Her smile lighted her ordinary face with its gentleness and sincerity.
‘I never think of failure—Professor van Wijkelen will operate and it will be a complete success, just as he says.’ She looked across at him as she spoke and found him staring at her, and there was no mistaking the faint sneer on his face, but because she liked him, she saw the hurt there too. Someone at some time had turned him into a cold, embittered man; she wondered who it was and hated them. Once, just once, he had smiled at her and she wanted him to smile like that again, but that, at that moment, seemed unlikely.
She settled down to a steady pattern of work, the same work as she would have been doing in a London hospital, even though the language was different, but all the doctors and a good many of the nurses spoke English and she herself, with the aid of her dictionary and a good deal of good-natured help from everyone else, managed to make herself understood. The days passed quickly. Under her patient’s kindly direction she went each afternoon to some fresh part of the city, sometimes to a museum, sometimes to gaze at the outside of some old house whose fascinating history he had described to her delighted ears while she was fulfilling the various duties which made up her day. He was looking a little better, mainly due to the blood transfusions, to which he submitted with an ill grace because they interfered with his movements in bed. He was a great reader and an even greater writer and a formidable conversationalist. Abigail became fond of him, as indeed did anyone who came in daily contact with him. The day before his operation he paid her, handing her an envelope with a word of thanks and a little joke about him being strong enough to do it the following week, which touched her soft heart because although she had complete faith in Professor van Wijkelen, things quite outside his control could go wrong. She tucked the envelope away under her apron bib and as she did so wondered for the hundredth time why Bolly’s last letter had been so strange; asking her not to send him any more money for at least another week. A good thing in a way, because she had not yet discovered the best way of sending it to him, all the same, she felt a vague disquiet.
Professor van Wijkelen came each day, treating her with his usual polite chill, at direct variance to the obvious regard he had for his patient. She stood quietly by while they talked together and longed for the warmth of his voice to be directed just once at herself. A wish which was most unlikely to be fulfilled, she told herself wryly, handing him charts and forms and reports and at the end giving him her own report very concisely in her clear precise voice. He liked to take her report outside the patient’s room and did her the courtesy of giving her his full attention. And now, on this day before he was to operate, he listened even more carefully than usual. When she had finished he said, as he always said: ‘Thank you, Miss Trent,’ and proceeded to give her detailed instructions as to what he wished her to do on the following day.
The operation was a success, although only the next few days would show if the success was to be a lasting one. Abigail had taken her patient to the theatre and remained there to assist the anaesthetist. For a good deal of the time she was free to watch the professor at work. He was a good surgeon completely engrossed in his work and talking very little. When at length he was finished, he thanked the theatre sister and stalked away without a word. He was in his old friend’s room within minutes of his return to it, though. Abigail was still getting the old man correctly positioned and adjusting the various tubes and drip when he came silently through the open door.
‘I don’t want him left, Nurse. I have spoken to Sister—if you wish to go off duty, she will send someone to take over. Is that clear?’
‘Perfectly, thank you,’ said Abigail, and because she was checking the closed drainage, didn’t say any more. She had no intention of going off duty; she had promised Professor de Wit that she would stay with him and she could see no reason why she shouldn’t do just that. She was, when all was said and done, his special nurse. Professor van Wijkelen said abruptly:
‘He’ll do—with careful nursing,’ and turned on his heel and left her.
She didn’t leave her patient again, only for the briefest of meal breaks and the professor came in twice more as well as his registrar, a portly little man whom Abigail rather liked. He spoke a fluent, ungrammatical English and she got on famously with him and she was grateful to him too, because he came often to check on the patient’s condition and cheer her with odd titbits of gossip so that the day passed quickly. It was half an hour before she was due off that Zuster van Rijn came rustling down the corridor to tell her that the night nurse had been struck down with a sore throat and a temperature and wouldn’t be able to come on duty, and there was no one to take her place. ‘I can put a nurse on until midnight, though, and then she need not come on until the noonday shift. Could you possibly …?’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Abigail. ‘I’ll go off at eight, have supper and a sleep and come back here at twelve.’
Zuster van Rijn looked relieved. ‘That is good—tomorrow morning I will get someone to take over while you go to bed for a few hours.’
So it was that when Professor van Wijkelen came at one o’clock in the morning, it was Abigail who rose quietly from her chair near the bed. His glance flickered over her as he went to look at his patient; it was only when he was satisfied as to his condition that he asked curtly:
‘Why are you on duty? Where is the night nurse?’
‘It’s quite all right, sir,’ said Abigail soothingly. ‘Nurse Tromp is off sick and there wasn’t time to get a full-time night nurse. I’ve been off duty, I came back at midnight.’
‘Until when?’
‘Until I can be relieved. Zuster van Rijn will arrange something.’
‘Have you had your days off?’
‘I’d rather not have them until the professor is better.’ She spoke uncertainly because he was looking annoyed again. ‘I imagine that my days off can be fitted in at any time, as I’m not a member of the hospital staff.’
‘You have no need to state the obvious, Nurse. You must do as you please and I daresay Zuster van Rijn will be glad if you remain on duty for a few days until Professor de Wit is on the mend.’
He spoke carelessly as though he didn’t mind if she had her days off or not, and indeed, she thought wearily, why should he?
He went away then and she spent a busy night, because there was a lot of nursing to do and the professor had regained consciousness and wished to be far too active. But presently, after an injection, he dropped off into a refreshing sleep and Abigail was free to bring her charts up to date, snatch a cup of coffee and then sit quietly between the regular intervals of checking one thing and another. It was, she mused, a splendid opportunity to think quietly about the future, but perhaps she was too tired, for when she tried to do so, she seemed unable to clear her mind. She gave up presently, and spent the rest of the night idly thumbing through her dictionary, hunting for words which, even when she found them, she was unable to pronounce.
The professor came again at seven o’clock. Abigail, with the help of another nurse, had made her patient’s bed and sat him up against his pillows; she had washed him too and combed his fringe of hair and his whiskers and dressed him in his own pyjamas. He looked very old and very ill, but she had no doubt at all that he was going to pull through, for he had a good deal of spirit. She was drawing up an injection to give him when Professor van Wijkelen arrived; he looked as though he had slept the clock round, and now, freshly shaved and immaculately dressed, he sauntered in for all the world as though he were in the habit of paying his visits at such an early hour. His good morning to her was brief; so brief that it seemed pointless, but she answered him nicely, smiling from a tired face that had no colour at all, unhappily aware that there was nothing about her appearance to make him look at her a second time.
He didn’t say much to his patient but motioned her to give the injection, walked over to the window and sat down at the table there and began to study the papers she had laid ready for him. He had given her fresh instructions and was on the point of leaving when he remarked:
‘You look as though you could do with a good sleep, Nurse.’
‘Of course she needs a good sleep,’ Professor de Wit’s voice was testy even though it was weak. ‘Just because you choose to work yourself to death doesn’t mean that everyone else should do the same.’
‘I have no intention of working anyone to death. Nurse is doing a job like anyone else and she has a tongue in her head. If she cannot carry out her duties, she has only to say so.’
He didn’t look at her but flung ‘I shall look in later,’ over his shoulder as he went.
‘Such a pity that …’ began her patient, and fell asleep instantly just as Abigail was hopeful of hearing why something was a great pity—something to do with Professor van Wijkelen, she felt sure.
The next few days were busy ones. Her patient continued to improve, but there was a great deal of nursing care needed and Abigail was a conscientious nurse. She took her daily walk because she knew that she needed the exercise in the fresh air, despite its rawness and the bitter wind which never ceased to blow, but her days off she saved up; she would take them when the case was finished. There had, as yet, been no talk of sending Professor de Wit home although it had been made clear to her that she was to accompany him. They would be in hospital another week at least—two probably; if it hadn’t been for the niggling worry about Bollinger, she would have been happier than she had been for a long time. She had made some friends in the hospital by now and she was battling on with her Dutch, helped a great deal by her patient, who now that he was feeling better spent a fair proportion of his waking hours correcting her accent and grammar.
It was the day after the drip came down for the last time and the old man had walked a few steps on her arm that Professor van Wijkelen had come to see him and on his way out again had said in his usual austere way:
‘Nurse, if you are free tomorrow afternoon, I wish you to come with me—there is someone who wants to meet you.’
‘Who?’ asked Abigail, who liked to know where she was.
‘Shall we say you must wait and see?’ he enquired silkily, and then suddenly, as though he sensed that she was about to refuse, he smiled with such charm that she would have agreed to anything he wished. ‘Please,’ said the professor.
She nodded, knowing that when he looked at her like that she wanted nothing more than to please him. She was thoughtful after he had gone and Professor de Wit said nothing, although she had expected him to. When she saw that he didn’t intend to discuss it with her, she launched into an argument on the subjunctive in the Dutch language, concentrating fiercely upon her companion’s learned comments, because Professor van Wijkelen was taking up much too much of her attention these days.
CHAPTER THREE
THE PROFESSOR WAS waiting for her when she reached the hospital forecourt the following afternoon. He greeted her with unsmiling courtesy as he opened the car door for her to get in, and because he so obviously didn’t want to talk, she remained silent as he took the car through the gates and into the narrow streets beyond.
‘You don’t want to know where I am taking you?’ he enquired blandly.
‘Yes, of course I do, but I daresay you wouldn’t choose to tell me, so I shan’t ask.’ Abigail spoke matter-of-factly and without rancour.
‘We are going to my house.’
That startled her. ‘What ever for?’
‘There is somebody you should meet—it seemed the best place.’
‘Oh, I see.’ She didn’t see at all and she was longing to ask him who it was and didn’t because he would be expecting it.
‘Very wise of you,’ he commented silkily, answering her unspoken thought. ‘I’ve no intention of telling you. How do you find Professor de Wit?’
She obligingly followed his lead. ‘Determined to get well as soon as possible.’
‘Yes—I have every hope that he will. The operation wasn’t quite straightforward.’ He launched into details and then said to surprise her:
‘He likes you, Nurse Trent. I hope that you will be prepared to go home with him for a few days?’
‘Certainly,’ said Abigail. There was nothing she would like better, for a variety of reasons, which for the moment at least, she didn’t intend to look into too deeply. She looked about her. They were travelling along the Herengracht, beautiful and picturesque with its old houses on either side of the tree-lined canal. Some way down its length the professor turned the car into a short arm of the canal—a little cul-de-sac, spanned by a narrow footbridge half way down its length. Houses lined the cobbled streets on either side of the water and across its far end, and trees, even in their winter bareness, crowded thickly along its banks.
The Rolls slid sedately along its length and came to a halt outside one of the houses at the end, facing the canal. It was a very old house, with double steps leading to a great door and another, smaller door tucked away under those same steps. The windows were high and narrow and climbed up the front of the house. The higher they climbed the smaller they became, until they terminated in one very large one, heavily shuttered under the steep gable of the house. There was a tremendous hook above it, because that was the only way to get anything in or out of the houses’ top floors.
It was peaceful in the small backwater, away from the traffic, with only the wind sighing around the steeple roofs. Abigail got out and looked around her while the professor opened his house door, and then at his bidding went inside.
It was all she had expected and hoped for, with its black and white tiled floor, its plasterwork ceiling and plain white walls, upon which were hung a host of paintings, and its carved staircase rising from one side.
The furnishings were in keeping—a heavy oak table along one wall, flanked by two carved oaken chairs which Abigail thought looked remarkably uncomfortable, while the other wall held an oak chest upon which reposed a great blue and white bowl, filled with spring flowers.
Abigail rotated slowly, trying to see everything at once. ‘How absolutely beautiful—it’s quite perfect,’ she said, and was instantly sorry she had spoken, because when she looked at her companion he was looking down his long nose at her as though she had been guilty of some offending vulgarity. She went a faint, angry pink, which turned even brighter when he remarked austerely:
‘I feel sure, from the ferocious expression upon your face, that you are on the point of bidding me not to be like that, or some such similar phrase, Miss Trent. May I beg you not to do so—I am easily irritated.’
‘So I’ve noticed,’ Abigail told him tartly. ‘The smallest thing … And now, Professor, if I might meet this person.’ Her eyes swept round the empty hall; the house was very quiet, she allowed her thoughtful gaze to rest upon the man beside her and was on the point of speaking when he interrupted her:
‘No, Miss Trent, I can assure you that there is nothing of sinister intent in my request to you to accompany me here.’ He smiled thinly. ‘You surely could not have seriously supposed that?’
It was annoying to have her thoughts read so accurately. Abigail said crossly, because that was exactly what she had been thinking, ‘No, of course not. I’m not such a fool—you have to be joking.’
He said nothing to this but opened a door and said: ‘Perhaps you would like to wait in here?’
She went past him into a small panelled room, warm and snug in the light of the fire burning in the steel grate. It was furnished in the utmost comfort with a number of easy chairs, leather-covered; a charmingly inlaid pier table against one wall, I small round table, inlaid with coloured mosaic work, conveniently close to the hearth, a revolving bookcase filled with books and a small Regency work-table. The professor pressed a switch and a number of table lamps bathed their surroundings in a delicate pink, highlighting the walls, which she could see were covered with red embossed paper, almost hidden along two sides of the room by the pictures hung upon it, and completely hidden on its third side by shelves of books. The room called for comment, but this time she held her tongue, walking to the centre of the room and standing quietly, waiting for him to speak first.
He didn’t speak at all, but went out of the room, shutting the door behind him, and Abigail for one split second fought an urge to rush to the door and try the handle. Instead, she turned her back on it and went to examine the paintings on the walls. Mostly portraits of bygone van Wijkelens, she decided, who had undoubtedly passed on their good looks with an almost monotonous regularity. She was peering at a despotic-looking old gentleman in a tie-wig, when the door opened behind her and she turned round to see who it was.
Bollinger stood there. She cried on a happy, startled breath: ‘Bolly—oh, Bolly!’ and burst into tears. He crossed the room and patted her on the shoulder and said: ‘There, there, Miss Abby—I gave you a shock, eh? Thought you’d be pleased and all.’
‘Oh, Bolly, I am! I’m so happy to see you, that’s why I’m crying—aren’t I a fool? But how did you get here?’ A sudden thought struck her. ‘In the professor’s house?’ She whisked the spotless handkerchief he always carried out of his pocket and blew her nose and wiped her eyes. ‘Does he know?’
‘Course he knows, love. It’s him as thought to do it. You see, he comes along one night and gives me your letter and the money, and I asks him to have a cuppa, seeing as it’s a cold night, and we gets talking and I tells him a bit about us, and he says to me, ‘’Well, Bollinger, seeing as how Miss Trent’s going to be in Amsterdam for a week or two yet, why don’t you get yourself a little job and be near her?’”
‘”Well,” I says, ‘’that’s easier said than done,” and he says: ‘’I’m looking for a gardener and odd job man for a week or two while my man has his bunions done—how about it?” So here I am, Miss Abby, came yesterday. He paid me fare and I’m to get my wages, so I’m in clover, as they say—no need for you to give me any more money.’
‘It’s fantastic,’ declared Abigail. ‘I simply can’t believe it—do you like him, Bolly?’
‘Yes, that I do, Miss Abby—a bit of a toff, you might say, but a gent all right.’
Abigail blew her nose again to prevent herself from bursting into another bout of tears. ‘Oh, Bolly, it’s like being home again. And of course I shall go on paying you your money—have you any idea how much it is we owe you? Don’t you see, Bolly, I must pay you back now that I know about it and can afford to do so?’
‘Well, if it makes you happy, Miss Abby. How long do you think you’ll be here?’
‘I’m not sure. Another two weeks, perhaps three. What have you done about your room?’
‘I give it up, it wasn’t all that hot. This professor, he says he knows someone in London lets rooms, very nice—a bit more than I got, but if I save me wages …’
‘And I pay you each week while you’re here, and by the time I get back to London and you’re running a bit low, I’ll be in another job and be able to send you something each week.’ She hugged him. ‘Oh, Bolly, it’s all so wonderful, I can’t believe it. Are you happy here? Where do you live?’
‘Here, of course, Miss Abby. I got a room at the top of the house—very snug and warm it is too.’
‘You don’t have to work too hard?’
‘Lord love you, no, Miss Abby—nice little bit of garden behind, and I does the odd job—and I’m to go to his other house in the country once a week and see to the garden there.’
Abigail stood silent, digesting this new aspect of Professor van Wijkelen. ‘Well …’ she began, and was interrupted by the door opening to admit a small round dumpling of a woman with a pleasant face. She shook Abigail by the hand and said in very tolerable English, ‘The housekeeper, Mevrouw Boot,’ and Abigail, mindful of her Dutch manners, replied: ‘Miss Abigail Trent.’
Mevrouw Boot eyed her with kindly curiosity as she spoke. ‘The professor begs that Miss will return to hospital when she must. There is a car at the door in five minutes. He excuses himself.’
She smiled again and went quietly out of the room, and Abigail looked at Bollinger and said with unconscious sadness, ‘He doesn’t like me, you know,’ and had this statement instantly repudiated by Bolly who exclaimed in a shocked voice:
‘That I can’t believe, begging your pardon, Miss Abby—a nice young lady like you …’
‘Well, it doesn’t matter in the least,’ said Abigail with such firmness that she almost believed what she was saying—but not quite, because it mattered out of all proportion to everything else. ‘I’d better go, I suppose it’s a taxi and I oughtn’t to keep it waiting. Come to the door with me, Bolly.’
They crossed the hall, lingering a little. ‘The professor says you’re to come whenever ye’re inclined,’ Bolly explained, ‘but not the days I go to the country.’
She nodded and stopped. ‘All right, Bolly, I’ll remember. I’m very grateful to him. Do you suppose I should write him a letter?’
He looked astonished. ‘You see him, don’t you, can’t you do it then?’
She shook her head. ‘I told you he doesn’t like me,’ and as if to underline her words one of the doors opened and Mevrouw Boot came into the hall and before she closed the door behind her, Abigail and Bollinger had an excellent view of the professor sitting at a desk facing it—the powerful reading lamp on it lighted his face clearly; he was staring at Abigail with no expression, giving her the peculiar feeling that she wasn’t there, and then lowered his handsome head to the papers before him. The door closed and when the housekeeper had gone, Abigail said softly:
‘You see, Bolly? He doesn’t even want to see me, let alone speak.’
She smiled a little wanly, wished him a warm goodbye and went outside. The Rolls was before the steps, an elderly man at the wheel. He got out of the car when he saw her and opened the door, smiling nicely as he did so although he didn’t speak, and she returned the smile, for he had a kind face, rugged and lined—like a Dutch Bolly, she thought as she settled herself beside him for the journey back to the hospital. During the short ride she tried her best to reconcile the professor’s dislike of her with his kindness to Bollinger. There had, after all, been no need to offer the old man a job, even a temporary one. She hoped that Bolly hadn’t told him too much, although she discounted as ridiculous the idea that he might have acted out of sympathy to herself as well as Bollinger. It was all a little mysterious and she gave up the puzzle and began to ask her companion some questions about Amsterdam, hoping that he could understand. It was an agreeable surprise to find that he could, and moreover, reply to them in English.
At the hospital, she thanked him for the ride, wondering who he was and not liking to ask for fear the professor would hear of it and consider her nosey. She went back to her patient with her curiosity unsatisfied, to find him feeling so much better after a refreshing nap that he wanted to know what she had been doing with her afternoon. She told him, skating over the more unexplainable bits, and rather to her surprise he made very little comment, and that was about herself and Bollinger. About the professor he had nothing to say at all.
The days slid quietly by, each one bringing more strength to Professor de Wit. He was to go home in a week’s time, said Professor van Wijkelen when he called one morning soon after Abigail had been to his house, and as he had said it, both he and his patient looked at her.
‘You’ll come with me, Abby?’ asked her patient, who considered himself on sufficiently good terms with her by now to address her so. The professor’s cool, ‘I hope you will find it convenient to go with Professor de Wit for another week, Nurse Trent,’ sounded all the more stilted. She said that yes, of course she would, hiding her delight at the idea of seeing the professor, even if he hated her, for another few days, and the lesser delight of knowing that she would be able to repay Bolly quite a lot of money. She went away to fetch the latest X-rays the professor decided to study, walking on air.
She told Bollinger about it the next day when they met, as they often did, for a cup of coffee and half an hour’s chat. Bollinger, she was glad to see, looked well, and he was happy with his gardening and the odd jobs he was doing around the house. He had been to the country too, but Abigail didn’t press him with questions about this; somehow she felt that the less she knew about the professor’s private life, the better it would be.
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Betty Neels
Mills & Boon presents the complete Betty Neels collection. Timeless tales of heart-warming romance by one of the world’s best-loved romance authors.SHE WAS A TRUE “SATURDAY’S CHILD”Abigail worked hard for a living. And she expected to go on earning her own living for no man had shown signs of wanting to marry her—least of all the mysterious Professor Dominic van Wijkelen. Certainly he admired her nursing skills. He confi dently asked her to take on his private cases, which took Abigail from London to Holland then Spain.But all he seemed to feel for her was intense dislike! Did Dominic not trust women? Was she too plain? Whatever the reason, there was little Abigail could do about it.
Saturday’s Child
Betty Neels
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CHAPTER ONE
THE ROOM WAS chilly and severe, as was the woman sitting behind the desk in one of its corners. The desk lamp, which only partly held at bay the fog of the darkened January sky outside, also served to illuminate her features, and the girl who had taken the chair on the opposite side of the desk in answer to the woman’s brisk nod occupied herself in giving her interviewer a softer hair-style, appropriate make-up and a more becoming dress. These alterations, mused Miss Abigail Trent, as she admitted to that name, would take away at least ten years from the age of her unconscious interviewer, who looked up and repeated, ‘Your age, Miss Trent?’
‘Twenty-four.’
‘Your education?’
Abigail murmured the name of a well-known girls’ boarding school. when her father had been alive there had been money enough …
‘You are state Registered?’
Abigail nodded and when asked to give the name of her training school mentioned a famous teaching hospital in London.
‘Have you family ties?’
She thought of the two cousins in Canada; they sent her Christmas cards each year, but they could hardly be described as ties, nor, for that matter, could Uncle Sedgeley, her mother’s brother, married to a peer’s sister and landed gentry, and totally disapproving of her father, her mother’s marriage to him and to Abigail herself. She said quietly in her pleasant voice: ‘No,’ and when she was asked what branch of nursing she had most recently been in, said: ‘Surgery—the operating theatre, too.’
‘You’re willing to travel?’
It sounded like the beginnings of an advertisement in the Personal Column of The Times. She said, ‘Certainly,’ and smiled at the woman, who didn’t smile back but looked at her watch as though time was rationed for her interviews and she had used it all up on Abigail. She got up briskly and went across to the filing cabinet against one wall and started pulling out its drawers. Presently she came back with a small folder and sat down again. ‘I think we could offer you a post immediately if you are prepared to take a medical case. A patient in Amsterdam—an American woman staying with friends there, in their flat. She has been in hospital with severe gastric symptoms and is now back with them—still in bed, of course, pending the doctor’s decision. She didn’t care for the hospital, for she speaks no Dutch and found the regulations a little trying. She is, I gather, rather …’ She wisely left the sentence unfinished and went on: ‘You will be paid twenty pounds a week and receive your board and lodging, and she is prepared to pay your fare at the end of a fortnight. The flat is, I believe, in one of the best parts of the city. You will have two and a half hours free every afternoon, and such other times as you can arrange for yourself. Should you take the post, you will pay this agency twelve and a half per cent of your salary until such time as you leave.’
She finished speaking and sat, tapping her ballpoint on the blotting pad in front of her. After perhaps half a minute she enquired, ‘Well, Miss Trent, do you care to take the case?’
It wasn’t quite what Abigail wanted, although she hardly knew what she did want—only to get away from London—from England, for a while, so that she could adjust herself to a future which no longer held her mother. And she needed the money. She got to her feet. ‘Yes, I’ll take it,’ she said. ‘When do you want me to go?’
‘Please sit down again.’ The woman looked more severe than ever. ‘I’ll give you the patient’s name and address and advise you on the easiest way of getting to the case. I suggest that you fly over early tomorrow, so that you will arrive in Amsterdam by lunch time—that should give you time to unpack, see your patient and begin your duties without delay.’
Abigail blinked the fine silky lashes of eyes which were her sole claim to beauty in an otherwise ordinary face. They were brown and large and the brows above them were silky too. But her nose was too short, her mouth too wide and her hair too mousy to give her even a modicum of good looks. She wasn’t sure at this moment if the change would be for the better; probably not, but she could always go back to hospital again. She held out a hand in its slightly shabby glove and took the papers which the woman was holding out to her.
Two minutes later she was outside in the street, standing rather uncertainly on the pavement while the passers-by pushed and jostled her first one way, then the other; not meaning to treat her roughly, but intent on getting to wherever they were going as quickly as possible. Presently she crossed the road, drawn by the cheerful lights of a Golden Egg restaurant, and went inside. It was almost twelve o’clock on this damp and foggy day in the first week of January; lunch in a pleasant warmth seemed a good idea. She chose egg and chips and coffee and while she was waiting for them got out her little notebook and started doing sums. Twenty pounds a week would be a godsend; she hadn’t earned any money at all for three months now. When her mother had fallen ill, she had given up her job at the hospital and stayed at home to nurse her, because the doctor had told her that her mother had only a few months to live anyway, and Abigail couldn’t bear the thought of her living out those last few weeks in some strange hospital bed. She had gone home for almost three months, and her mother had had every small comfort and luxury she wished for or needed, and Abigail had spent what money she had saved, which wasn’t much, to pay for them. Her mother’s pension had paid the rent of their small flat and the household expenses, but when she had died there had been nothing left at all. The furniture went with the flat, her mother’s jewellery, never very valuable, had been sold over the last five years, and Bollinger, who had served her father faithfully until his death and had refused to leave them after it, was owed almost a year of his low wages. The funeral had taken almost all the money she had, and now today, barely a week later, she had gone out to get a job, and it had had to be private nursing—that way she would get her board and lodging free and would get paid sooner.
The egg and chips arrived and she ate them, still doing sums in her head. She would just about be able to get to Amsterdam and have a pound or two in her purse until she was paid. Two weeks wasn’t long to wait, and anyway it didn’t look as though she was going to get much free time in which to spend her money. Even when the twelve and a half per cent had been deducted, she would still be able to send Bollinger some money. He would retire now, she supposed, but he would only have his old age pension, and that wouldn’t go far in London. She began to worry about where he would live; after that night they would have to leave the flat and she wasn’t going to leave him to struggle on his own after the years of service he had given them, and he had been so kind and helpful to her and her mother. The food on her plate became dimmed by the tears in her eyes, but she fought them back and doggedly went on eating the chips on her plate and drinking the coffee she didn’t want any more.
She took a bus back to the flat, the small top flat just off the Cromwell Road where they had lived since her father died and Abigail had started her hospital training. As she put her key in the front door at the top of the long flights of stairs, she could hear Bollinger in the kitchen; he came to its door as she went inside and said comfortably:
‘There you are, Miss Abby, the kettle’s on and I treated us to some crumpets. Nothing like a nice hot crumpet.’ He went back to the gas stove. ‘How did it go?’
‘I’ve got a job, Bolly—twenty pounds a week, in Amsterdam, nursing an American woman. I’m to go tomorrow, and isn’t it lucky I’ve still got my passport from that trip we had to Ostend? So everything’s going to be OK.’ She cast her coat and hat over the back of one of the wooden chairs at the table and went to get the teapot from the dresser. ‘Now, about you—did you manage to find anything?’
‘I did—the woman at the paper shop, remember her? She’s got a daughter with a house just round the corner from here. I can have a room and me meals with her and her husband. Four pounds and fifty pence a week—leaves me plenty, so don’t you worry your pretty head about me.’
She looked at him with deep affection, loving him for the cheerful lie. He was almost seventy, she knew, and he had worked very hard around the flat since they had moved into it, shopping and cooking and repairing fuses and waiting on her mother hand and foot. It was impossible to repay him, but at least she would see that he got the money which they owed him and then a small weekly pension after that so that he could find a proper home and not some small back room where he would be lonely. Years ago he had been her father’s gardener and odd job man, and when her father had died he had somehow stayed on with them, smoothing her mother’s path, offering practical advice when it was discovered that there was no money at all, and Abigail had never quite discovered how it was that he had persuaded her mother to keep him on at such a ridiculous wage.
She made the tea and they sat down together with the plate of crumpets between them. ‘I’m glad you’ve got somewhere to go for the present,’ began Abigail. She opened her handbag. ‘They gave me five pounds in advance on my salary,’ she went on mendaciously. ‘I’ve got more than enough and this’ll help you to get started, then each week, once I get my pay, I shall send you some money,’ and when he began to protest, ‘No, Bolly dear, you’re my friend and you were Mother’s and Father’s friend too—I can well afford to pay you back the wages we owe you and then pay you a little each week. It won’t take me long, you see, for I get my room and my food for free, don’t I? And in a little while I’ll get a hospital job again and perhaps we can find a small place and you can come and run it for me while I work.’
She smiled at him, trying not to see that he was getting quite elderly now and wouldn’t be fit to do much for many more years—something she would worry about when the time came, she told herself vigorously. She poured more tea and said cheerfully: ‘How funny Uncle Sedgeley was yesterday. I wonder what he and Aunt Miriam would have done if I’d accepted their invitation to go to Gore Park and stay with them? They hated Father, didn’t they, because he was a Methodist parson and hadn’t any worldly ideas and they hadn’t been near …’ She paused, unable to bear talking of her mother. ‘Aunt Miriam told me how fortunate I was that I had a vocation, for all the world as though I’d taken a vow not to marry.’
‘Of course you’ll marry, Miss Abby,’ said Bollinger, quite shocked.
‘That’s nice of you to say so, Bolly, but I’m afraid she may be right, you know. I’m twenty-four and I’ve never had a proposal—nothing even approaching one. I’m a sort of universal sister, you know, because I’m plain.’
‘You’re talking nonsense, Miss Abby. You just haven’t met the right man, that’s all. He’ll come, don’t you fret.’
‘Yes? Well, when he does I shan’t marry him unless he lets you come along too,’ she said firmly. ‘Now let’s go and see this room of yours and then I’ll treat us to the pictures.’
A remark which would have shocked Uncle Sedgeley if he could have heard it; to go to the cinema barely a week after her mother’s funeral—unthinkable! She could just hear him saying it, but it didn’t matter what he thought; her mother would have been the first one to suggest it. Life went on and you didn’t forget someone just because you sat in the stalls and watched some film or other without seeing any of it, and at least it would be warm there and infinitely better than sitting in the little flat talking, inevitably, of old times with Bolly, something she couldn’t bear to do.
She said goodbye to him the next morning and started her journey. She had booked her flight when she had left the agency, obedient to the severe woman’s instructions, and had packed her case with the sort of clothes she considered she might need, adding the blue uniform dresses and caps and aprons she had been forced to buy, and now on the plane at last, she got out her little notebook again and did some anxious arithmetic. With luck she wouldn’t have to spend more than the equivalent of a few shillings; stamps for her letters to Bollinger, small odds and ends for herself. She hoped that her patient might need her for more than two weeks—three, or even four weeks at twenty pounds a week would mount up nicely, and they were going to pay her fare too. She closed the little book, opened the newspaper the air hostess had handed her and read it with grave attention, fearful of allowing her thoughts to wander, and was surprised when far below she saw the flat coast of Holland, glimpsed through the layers of cloud.
Schiphol, she discovered, was large, efficient and pleasantly welcoming. With hundreds like her, she was passed along the human conveyor belt which eventually spilled her into the open air once more, only to be whisked up once more into the waiting bus which would take her to Amsterdam. It covered the ten miles to the capital with a speed which hardly gave her time to look around her and she got out at the bus terminus, still not quite believing that she was in Holland. It seemed such a very short time ago since she had said goodbye to Bollinger, as indeed it was.
Mindful of her instructions, she took a taxi to the address in the Apollolaan. It was, she quickly discovered, away from the centre of the city, for they quickly left the bustling, older part behind, to drive through modern streets lined with blocks of flats and shops. When they stopped half way down the Apollolaan, she got out, paid the driver from her small stock of money and crossed the pavement to enter the important-looking doorway of the building he had pointed out to her. It was of a substantial size, and from the cars parked before it, inhabited by the well-to-do, and inside the thickly carpeted foyer and neatly uniformed porter bore out her first impression. He greeted her civilly, and when she mentioned her name, ushered her into the lift, took her case from her and escorted her to the fourth floor. Here he abandoned her, her case parked beside her, outside the door of number twenty-one—occupied, according to the neat little plate at the side of the door, by Mr and Mrs E. Goldberg. Abigail drew a heartening breath and rang the beautifully polished bell.
The door was opened by a maid who, in answer to Abigail’s announcement of her name, invited her to enter, waved her to a chair, and disappeared. Abigail looked at the chair, a slender trifle which she felt sure would never bear the weight of her nicely rounded person, and stood looking around her. The hall was carpeted even more lushly than the foyer; the walls were hung with what she considered to be a truly hideous wallpaper, embossed and gilded, and as well as the little chair she had prudently ignored, there was a small settee, buttoned fatly into red velvet, and another chair with a straight back and a cane seat which looked decidedly uncomfortable. A wall table of gold and marble occupied the space between two doors, burdened with a French clock and matching vases. Abigail, who had a nice taste, shuddered delicately and wished that her mother could have been with her and share her feelings. For a moment her opulent surroundings faded to give place to the little flat in the Cromwell Road, but she resolutely closed her mind to her memories; self-pity helped no one, she told herself firmly, and turned to see who was coming through the door on the other side of the hall.
It had to be Mrs Goldberg, for she looked exactly like her name. She was middle-aged, with determinedly blonde hair, blue eyes which were still pretty and a baby doll face, nicely made up, which, while still attractive, had lost its youthful contours. She smiled now, holding out her hand, and when she spoke her voice was warm even though its accent was decidedly American.
‘Well, so you’re the nurse, my dear. I can’t tell you how glad we are to have you.’ She added dramatically, ‘I am exhausted, absolutely exhausted! Night and day have I been caring for our dear Clara—she is so sensitive, you know, we couldn’t leave her in hospital, although I’m sure they were kindness itself to her, but she’s used to the little comforts of life.’ The blue eyes looked at her a shade anxiously. ‘We hope that the worst is over; Doctor Vincent will be in after lunch and this evening he’ll bring a specialist—the very best to be got, I assure you—to see dear Clara, and he’ll decide whether to operate or not.’ She paused to take breath and Abigail asked quickly: ‘You’d like me to take over immediately, I expect? If I could go to my room and change …’
Mrs Goldberg smiled widely, showing a hint of gold tooth. ‘My dear, will you? I simply must rest. We lunch at half past twelve—so early, but when in Rome, I always say—If you could get into your uniform and make poor Clara a little more comfortable?’
‘Of course.’ Abigail smiled understandingly, hoping at the same time that Mrs Goldberg might suggest a cup of coffee or tea. Half past twelve was an hour away and she was, while not exactly tired, in need of a few minutes to collect herself, but Mrs Goldberg made no such offer, but followed her from the hall and into a short passage and so to her room. It was nice, with a view over the Apollolaan and comfortable anonymous furniture so often found in guest rooms, and it had the added attraction of a bathroom next door. As soon as she was alone Abigail unpacked her uniform, washed her face and hands, put her mousy hair up into its tidy bun, perched her frilly cap on top of it, buckled her belt around her trim waist and with a nicely made-up face, went back into the hall.
Mrs Goldberg must have been waiting for her; she appeared suddenly, like a cheerful outsize fairy, from one of the doors and said approvingly:
‘My, how quick you’ve been, and what a quaint outfit—that cap, it’s not a bit like our nurses wear back home.’
Abigail explained quickly that her hospital took pride in allowing its trained nurses to wear that particular headgear—it had been worn for a very long time and no one, least of all the nurses, wanted it changed.
‘Mighty becoming,’ commented Mrs Goldberg, ‘it sure will tickle poor Clara pink.’
Abigail, following her companion through another door, wondered if her patient felt well enough to be tickled by anything. At first sight it seemed not. Mrs Clara Morgan lay uncomfortably hunched against far too many pillows. Some of these she had tossed to the floor, the remainder were crowding into her back, which probably accounted for her petulant expression. She acknowledged Mrs Goldberg’s introduction languidly and said tiredly, ‘I’m glad you’ve come, Nurse, I’m very poorly and I need a great deal of skilled care and attention.’
Abigail murmured suitably and enquired if the doctor had left any message for her.
‘No,’ said Mrs Goldberg, ‘because he’ll be here in a couple of hours. Clara will tell you all about herself, won’t you, Girlie?’
Abigail judged it a good idea to get her oar in before her patient did, for she looked ill and tired and that was probably why she looked peevish. Her voice was persuasive. ‘Would you like me to give you a bed-bath and a fresh nightie and make you more comfortable? You’ll feel better for it.’
Her patient agreed, and while she submitted to Abigail’s kindly hands, discoursed at length upon her condition, its seriousness, the possibility of an operation, the need for her to return to the States as soon as she could, and the kindness of her friends the Goldbergs. That there was a thick thread of self-pity winding through her narrative was natural enough; it hadn’t taken Abigail long to gather that her patient was rich, spoilt and self-indulgent. She had, it transpired, been widowed twice, and, a still attractive woman in her early forties, was prepared to marry again should she find someone she liked sufficiently. Abigail listened without envy, because it wasn’t in her nature to be envious, and a certain amount of pity, because it seemed to her that Mrs Morgan was lonely too, despite her silver-backed hairbrushes and silk nighties and enormous bottles of perfume. But talking cheered her up, and by the time Abigail had smoothed the last wrinkle from the sheets, she declared that she felt a new woman.
‘I do believe we’re going to get on just fine,’ she declared. ‘I must admit that the idea of an English nurse didn’t appeal to me, but I’ll admit to being mistaken, though your uniform is pretty antiquated, isn’t it?’
Abigail admitted that perhaps it was. ‘They’re trying to change the uniforms in England, but you see, some of the hospitals are very old and they like to keep their own, however old-fashioned. Especially the caps—it’s like a regimental badge, everyone knows which hospital you were trained at just by looking at your cap.’
‘Well, I must say whoever thought of yours had a nice eye for something sexy.’
Abigail was folding towels neatly. No one had ever called her cap sexy before! She remained silent, nonplussed, and then said:
‘I think a nice milky drink, don’t you? I’ll go along and see about it.’
Milk and water, in equal proportions with afters of Mist. Mag. Tri., were her patient’s portion for lunch. Abigail measured carefully, arranged the two glasses on a little tray with a pretty cloth and bore them away to the sickroom, where she put the tray on the bed table, together with a selection of novels, the daily paper and a handful of glossy magazines, and then, quite famished, found her way to the dining room.
Mr Goldberg had come home to lunch. A small fat man with large glasses and a fringe of greying hair, possessed of a charming smile. Abigail liked him at once and wasn’t surprised to hear that he was something important to do with a permanent trade mission—anyone with a smile like that deserved to have a top job! They sat her between them at a large rectangular table and plied her with food. It was cold and grey outside, but here in the warm, over-furnished room, there was no need to think about the weather. She drank her soup, accepted a glass of wine and embarked on beef olives while she listened to her host and hostess and made polite replies to their questions whenever they asked them, which was frequently. She would have liked to have lingered over coffee with them, but she was on a job, after all. She excused herself and went back to her patient to find her asleep.
It seemed a good opportunity to unpack her few clothes and scribble a quick note to Bolly; most likely she would have the chance to post it before bedtime; if not, surely the hall porter would do it for her. She wrote the address with a little lump in her throat, because Bolly would probably be sitting by himself in that dreadful little back room with no other view than the house behind.
Dr Vincent came shortly afterwards. He was a tall man in his thirties, with regular features and an excellent command of the English language. He was obviously relieved to see Abigail and after he had examined Mrs Morgan and talked to her for a little while, he retired to the sitting room with Abigail so that he might discuss their patient. They sat opposite each other, on the edge of over-stuffed and very large easy chairs, because to sit back in them would have meant a complete loss of dignity on both their parts and the doctor was nothing if not dignified. He took her carefully through the ins and outs of Mrs Morgan’s illness. ‘This evening a specialist will come, Nurse—I shall of course accompany him. He is a consultant surgeon at several of our big hospitals and very well known. I feel that his opinion will be invaluable. It would be a pity for our patient to undergo an operation unless it is absolutely necessary. If we can get her well enough, she would much prefer that she should return to the United States with all speed. You are prepared to stay here until she returns, I hope?’
Abigail said that yes, she was. ‘What have they in mind?’ she wanted to know. ‘A gastrostomy? Surely if it’s a bad ulcer they’ll have to do an end-to-end anastimosis.’
Dr Vincent eyed her warily. ‘I think, Nurse, that we must leave such things for Professor van Wijkelen to decide.’
With a name like that, Abigail thought flippantly, a man ought to be able to decide anything. He would have a beard and begin all his remarks with -er. She would probably dislike him. Dr Vincent was speaking again, so she listened carefully to his instructions and forgot about the professor.
He came that evening, an hour or so after her patient had had another glass of milk and water with its attendant powder, and Abigail herself had had a short break for her own tea. Mr and Mrs Goldberg were out, and it had been brought to her on a tray in the sitting room. It had been pleasant to sit down for a little while on her own, while she had it, and then have the time to tidy herself, powder her ordinary nose and put on more lipstick. The results weren’t very encouraging, she considered, looking in the bedroom mirror. She had gone back to her patient’s room and taken her temperature and pulse, and sat her up more comfortably against her pillows, and was on a chair in her stockinged feet, reaching for a vase of flowers which someone had placed out of reach, and which, for some reason, Mrs Morgan had taken exception to, when there was a knock on the door and Doctor Vincent came in. The man who came in with him eclipsed him completely. He was a giant of a man, with a large frame which radiated energy despite the extreme leisureliness of his movements. He was handsome too, with pale hair, thickly silvered at the temples, a high-bridged nose and a well-shaped, determined mouth. His expression was one of cold ill-humour, and when he glanced up at her, still poised ridiculously on the chair, Abigail saw that his eyes were blue. It struck her with something of a shock that they were regarding her with dislike.
She got down off the chair, the flowers clutched in one hand, hastily put them down on one of the little tables which cluttered the room, crammed her feet into her shoes and reached the bedside at the same time as the two men. Doctor Vincent introduced the professor, adding a corollary of his talents, and Mrs Morgan, suddenly interested, shook hands. ‘And our nurse,’ went on Doctor Vincent, ‘arrived from England today and is already, I see, attending to the patient’s comfort. Miss Trent, this is Professor van Wijkelen, of whom I spoke.’
She held out her hand and he shook it perfunctorily and said nothing, only looked at her again with the same cold dislike, before sitting on the side of Mrs Morgan’s bed and saying, ‘Now, Mrs Morgan, will you tell me all your troubles, and perhaps Doctor Vincent and I can help you to get well again.’
His voice was charming, deep and quiet and compelling, and Mrs Morgan was nothing loath. Her recital, with various deflections concerning her own personal courage in the face of grave illness, her fears for the loss of her good looks and the fact that she had been twice widowed, took a long time. The professor sat quietly, not interrupting her at all, his eyes upon her face while she talked. He seemed completely absorbed and so, to his credit, did Doctor Vincent, who, Abigail guessed, must have heard the tale at least once already. She herself stood quietly by the bed, a well-trained mouse of a girl, her eyes, too, on her patient, although she would very much have preferred to fix them upon the professor.
Mrs Morgan finished at length and the professor said, ‘Quite, Mrs Morgan,’ and went on to ask her several questions. Finally, when he was satisfied with the answers, he turned to Abigail and asked her to prepare Mrs Morgan for his examination. He asked courteously in a voice of ice; Abigail wondered what had happened to sour him and take all the warmth from his voice as she bent to the task of getting Mrs Morgan modestly uncovered while the two men retired to the window and muttered together in their own language.
‘He’s ducky,’ whispered Mrs Morgan, and then sharply, ‘Don’t disarrange my hair, honey!’
She lay back, looking, to speak the truth, gorgeous. Abigail, obedient to her patient’s wish, had been careful of the hair; she had also arranged her patient’s wispy trifle of a bedjacket to its greatest advantage. Now she stood back and said briskly, ‘Ready when you are, sir,’ and watched while the professor conducted his examination. He prodded and poked gently with his large, square hands while he gazed in an abstracted fashion at the wall before him. At length, when he had finished and Abigail had rearranged Mrs Morgan, he said: ‘I think that there will be no need for an operation, but to be quite sure there are several tests which it will be necessary to do, and I am afraid that they must be done in hospital.’ He paused to allow Mrs Morgan to pull a pretty little face and exclaim:
‘Oh, no, Professor—I was so utterly miserable when I was there just a week ago, that’s why I engaged Nurse Trent here.’
‘In that case, may I suggest that you take her with you to hospital? She can attend you during the day and I am sure that we shall be able to find an English-speaking nurse for night duty. I should suppose that three or four days should be sufficient, then you can return here to await the result of the tests. If they are satisfactory, a week or so should suffice to see you on your feet again and well enough to return home.’
‘If you say so, Professor,’ Mrs Morgan’s voice was just sufficiently plaintive, ‘though I’m sure I don’t know how I shall get on in that hospital of yours. Still, as you say, if I take Nurse with me, I daresay I’ll be able to bear a few days.’
She smiled at him after this somewhat frank speech, but he didn’t smile in return, merely inclined his head gravely and offered his hand.
‘You’ll come and see me again, Professor?’ Mrs Morgan was still smiling. ‘I sure feel better already, you’ve a most reassuring way with you.’
If the professor was flattered by this remark he gave no sign. ‘Thank you, Mrs Morgan. I think that there is no necessity to see you again until you enter hospital. I will arrange that as soon as possible and you will of course see me there.’
‘I look forward to that—and be sure that I have a private room. I’m so sensitive, I can’t bear the sights and sounds of hospital, Professor.’
He walked to the door and then turned to face her with Doctor Vincent beside him. ‘I feel sure that Doctor Vincent will arrange everything to your liking, Mrs Morgan, and you will have your nurse to shield you from the—er—sights and sounds you so much dread.’ His smile was fleeting and reluctant, a concession to good manners, and it didn’t last long enough to include Abigail. He nodded curtly to her as he went away.
Surprisingly, he came the following day, late in the afternoon when Abigail had returned from her few hours off and was sitting with her patient, reading the New York Herald Tribune to her. She read very nicely in her quiet voice, sitting upright in a truly hideous reproduction Morris chair. She had enjoyed her afternoon off, and wished that her patient lived in one of the old houses beside the canals, because she would have dearly loved to see inside one of them. The flat in the Apollolaan was comfortable to the point of luxury, but all the same, she wouldn’t have liked to live in it for ever, but the brick houses with their gabled roofs reflected in the still waters of the grachten—they were a different matter; it would be wonderful to live in their serene fastness.
The morning had been successful too; Mrs Morgan seemed to like her, for she had chatted animatedly while Abigail performed the daily nursing chores, talking at great length about Professor van Wijkelen. ‘A darling man, Nurse,’ she mused. ‘I must find out more about him—such good looks and such elegance.’ She smiled playfully at Abigail. ‘Now mind, dear, and tell me anything you should hear about him. You’re bound to find out something in the hospital, aren’t you?’
Abigail had said that probably she would, provided she could find someone who could speak English. She had gone to lunch with Mr and Mrs Goldberg after that, and they had asked her a great many questions about her patient and seemed, she thought, a little relieved that dear Clara was to leave them for a day or two. Without someone in constant attendance, she must have put quite a strain on their good-natured hospitality.
Mrs Goldberg had asked her kindly if she had everything she needed and to be sure and say if she hadn’t and then told her to hurry out while she had the chance. And Abigail had, wrapped in her well-cut but not new tweed coat against the damp cold winds of Amsterdam. She hadn’t been able to do much in two hours, but at least she knew where she would go when next she was free; the complexity of grachten, tree-lined, their steely waters overlooked by the tall, quaintly shaped houses on either side of them, needed time to explore. There was no point in looking at the shops, not until she had some money to spend, but there was enough to see without spending more than the price of a tram fare.
The knock on the bedroom door had taken them both by surprise. Mr and Mrs Goldberg were both out, neither Abigail nor her patient had heard the maid go to the front door. She came in now and said in her basic English, ‘A person for the Zuster.’
Abigail put down the paper, which she was a little tired of anyway, saying: ‘Oh, that will be instructions from the hospital as to when we’re to go, I expect. I’ll go and see about it, shall I?’ and followed the maid out of the room. The visitor was in the sitting room. Abigail opened the door and went in and came to a standstill when she saw the professor standing before the window, staring out.
‘Oh, it’s you!’ she declared, quite forgetful of her manners because of her surprise, and was affronted when he answered irritably:
‘And pray why should it not be I, Nurse? Doctor Vincent has been called out unexpectedly and finds himself unable to call, and I had to come this way.’
‘Oh, you don’t have to explain,’ Abigail said kindly, and went on in a matter-of-fact voice, ‘You’ll want to see Mrs Morgan.’
‘No, Nurse, I do not. I wish merely to inform you that there will be a bed in the private wing tomorrow afternoon. Be good enough to bring your patient to the hospital at three o’clock. An ambulance will fetch you—you will need to bring with you sufficient for three days, four perhaps. Be good enough to see that Mrs Morgan fasts from midday tomorrow so that no time is wasted.’
He spoke shortly and she wondered if and why he was annoyed, perhaps because he had had to undertake Doctor Vincent’s errand, although surely he had a sufficiency of helpers to see to such mundane things as beds … He looked very arrogant and ill-humoured standing there, staring at her. She said briskly, ‘Very well, sir—and now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go back to my patient.’
He looked faintly surprised, although he didn’t bother to reply. Only as she started for the door did he ask, ‘What is your name?’
She barely paused. ‘Trent, sir.’
He said impatiently, ‘I am aware of that—we met yesterday, if you care to remember. What else besides Trent?’
It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him to mind his own business, but she wasn’t given to unkindness and perhaps he had some very good reason for looking so irritable all the time. ‘Abigail,’ she offered, and watched for his smile; most people smiled when they discovered her name; it was old-fashioned and quaint. But he didn’t smile.
‘Why?’
‘I was born on a Saturday,’ she began, a little worried because he wasn’t English and might not understand. ‘And Abigail …’ She paused. ‘It’s rather a silly reason and I don’t suppose you would know …’
He looked more annoyed than ever, his thick almost colourless brows drawn together in a straight line above a nose which to her appeared disdainful.
‘You should suppose nothing. I am sufficiently acquainted with your English verses—Saturday’s child has to work for her living, eh? and Abigail was a term used some hundreds of years ago to denote a serving woman, was it not?’
‘How clever of you,’ said Abigail warmly, and was rewarded with another frown.
‘And were your parents so sure that you would be forced to work for your living that they gave you this name?’
She said tight-lipped, because the conversation was becoming painful:
‘It was a joke between them. You will excuse me now, sir?’
She left him standing there and went back to her patient, who, on being told who the visitor was, showed her displeasure at not receiving a visit, although she brightened again when Abigail pointed out that she would see a good deal of him in hospital once she was settled in there. They spent the rest of the day quite happily, with Abigail opening and shutting cupboards and drawers in order to display various garments to her patient, who, however ill she felt, intended to look as glamorous as possible during her stay in hospital. It was much later, when Abigail had packed a few things for herself that, cosily dressing-gowned, she sat down before her dressing-table to brush her hair for the night. She brushed it steadily for some time, deep in thought, and she wasn’t thinking about herself, or her patient or Bollinger, but of Professor van Wijkelen. He was the handsomest man she had ever seen, also the most bad-tempered, but there had to be a reason for the look of dislike which he had given her when they had met—as though he had come prepared to dislike her, thought Abigail. She finished plaiting the rich thickness of her mousy hair and stared at her face in the mirror. Plain she might be, but in an inoffensive manner—her teeth didn’t stick out, she didn’t squint, her nose was completely unassuming; there was, in fact, nothing to cause offence. Yet he had stared at her as though she had mortally offended him. She put the brush away and padded over to the bed, thinking that she would very much like to get to know him better, not because he was so good-looking; he looked interesting as well, and for some reason she was unable to explain she found herself making excuses for his abrupt manner, even his dislike of her. She got into bed wondering sleepily what he was doing at that moment—the idea that he was a happily married man dispelled sleep for a few minutes until she decided that he didn’t look married. She slept on that surprisingly happy thought.
CHAPTER TWO
THE HOSPITAL WAS hidden away behind the thickly clustered old houses and narrow lanes of the city. It was itself old, although once inside, Abigail saw that like so many of the older hospitals in England, it had a modernised interior despite the long bleak corridors and small dark passages and bare enclosed yards which so many of its windows looked out upon. Mrs Morgan’s room was on the third floor, in the private wing, and although small, it was well furnished and the view from its window of the city around was a splendid one. Abigail got her patient safely into bed, tucked in the small lace-covered pillows Mrs Morgan had decided she couldn’t manage without, changed her quilted dressing-gown for a highly becoming bedjacket, rearranged her hair, found her the novel she was reading, unpacked her case and after leaving the bell within reach of her, went to find the Ward Sister.
Zuster van Rijn was elderly, round, cosy and grey-haired, with a lovely smile and a command of the English language which Abigail found quite remarkable. They sat together in the little office, drinking the coffee which one of the nurses had brought them, while Zuster van Rijn read her patient’s notes and charts and finally observed:
‘She does not seem too bad. Professor van Wijkelen never operates unless it is necessary—he is far too good for that, but she must have the tests which have been ordered—she can have the X-ray this afternoon and the blood test—tomorrow the test meal—just something milky this evening for her diet. You’re to stay with her, the professor tells me.’
‘Yes, Mrs Morgan is a little nervous.’
Zuster van Rijn smiled faintly. ‘Yes,’ her voice was dry. ‘There’s a room ready for you in the Nurses’ Home—would you like to go there now? There is nothing to do for Mrs Morgan for half an hour and one of the nurses can answer the bell. I will tell Zuster de Wit to go over with you.’
Abigail went back to her patient, to explain and collect her bag, and then followed the nurse down one flight of stairs, over a covered bridge, spanning what looked like a narrow lane of warehouses, and so into the Nurses’ Home. Zuster de Wit hurried her along a long passage and then a short one to stop half way down it.
‘Here,’ she said, and smiled as she flung open a door in a row of doors. The room was comfortable although a little dark, for its window overlooked another part of the hospital, but the curtains were gay and it was warm and cheerful. Abigail smiled in return and said, ‘How nice. Thank you,’ and Zuster de Wit smiled again, said ‘Dag’ and hurried away. Obviously she had been told to waste no time. Abigail, listening to her rapidly disappearing feet, hoped that she would be able to find her own way back to the ward again as she began to unpack her things. She had bought only a modicum of clothes—mostly uniform and her thick winter coat and a skirt and sweater, boots and the knitted beret and scarf she had made for herself during the weeks she had nursed her mother. It took only a few minutes to put these away and another minute or so to powder her nose and tuck her hair more tidily under her cap. It was almost four o’clock, as she shut the door she wondered about tea—perhaps they didn’t have it; there were several things she would have to find out before the day was over. She went back over the bridge and found her way to her patient’s room, to find her asleep.
Working in an Amsterdam hospital was almost exactly the same as working in her own London hospital; she had discovered this fact by the end of the day. Once she had become used to addressing even the most junior nurses as ‘Zuster’ and discovered that she was expected to say ‘Als t’U blift’ to anyone she gave something to, and ‘Dank U wel’ each time she was given something, be it instructions—mostly in sign language—or a thermometer or a holder for the potted plant someone had sent her patient, she felt a little less worried about the problem of language. She had had to go without her tea, of course—they had had it at three o’clock, but she went down to supper with the other nurses at half past six; a substantial meal of pea soup, pork with a variety of vegetables, followed by what Abigail took to be custard and as much coffee as she could drink.
She went back to the office to give her report and then returned to sit with Mrs Morgan who was feeling a little apprehensive about the test meal. At half past eight, just before the night nurse was due on duty, a house doctor came to see the new patient and a few minutes later Doctor Vincent. He listened patiently to her small complainings, soothed her nicely, recommended her to do as Abigail told her, and went away again, and presently when the night nurse came and Abigail had given her a report too, she went herself, over the bridge to the Nurses’ Home and to her room.
She hadn’t been in it for more than a minute when there was a knock on the door and the same nurses she had seen at supper took her off to their sitting room to watch TV which, although she was tired, Abigail found rather fun because Paul Temple was on and it was amusing to watch it for a second time and listen to the dubbed voices talking what to her was nonsense. For so the Dutch language seemed to her; she had been unable to make head or tail of it—a few words and phrases, it was true, she had been quick enough to pick up, but for the most part she had had to fall back on basic English and signs, all taken in very good part by the other nurses. It had been a great relief to find that the night nurse spoke English quite well; enough to understand the report and discuss Mrs Morgan’s condition with Abigail, and what was more important, Mrs Morgan seemed disposed to like her.
After Paul Temple she was carried off once more, this time to one of the nurses’ rooms to drink coffee before finally going to her own room. She slept soundly and got up the next morning feeling happier than she had done for some time; it was on her way down to breakfast that she realised that the uplift to her spirits was largely due to the fact that she would most probably see the professor during the course of the day.
Her hope was to be gratified; he passed her on the corridor as she made her way to her patient’s room after breakfast. She saw him coming towards her down its length and watched with faint amusement as the scurrying nurses got out of his way. When he drew level with her she wished him a cheerful good morning and in reply received a cold look of dislike and faint surprise, as though he were not in the habit of being wished a good day. Her disappointment was so sharp that she took refuge in ill temper too and muttered out loud as she sped along, ‘Oh, well, be like that!’
She found her patient in good spirits; she had slept well, the night nurse had understood her and she had understood the night nurse, and the Ryle’s tube had been passed and the test meal almost finished. The night nurse, giving the report to Abigail in the privacy of the nurses’ station further down the corridor, confided in her correct, sparse English that she herself had enjoyed a quiet night and had got a great deal of knitting done. She produced the garment in question—a pullover of vast proportions and of an overpowering canary yellow. They had their heads together over the intricacies of its pattern when the professor said from behind them:
‘If I might have the attention of you two ladies—provided you can spare the time?’ he added nastily.
The Dutch girl whipped round in much the same fashion as a thief caught in the act of robbing a safe, but Abigail, made of sterner stuff and unconscious of wrongdoing, merely folded the pullover tidily and said: ‘Certainly, sir,’ which simple remark seemed to annoy him very much, for he glared at her quite savagely.
‘You are both on duty, I take it?’ he asked.
‘No, me,’ said Abigail ungrammatically in her pleasant voice. ‘We’ve just discussed the report and Night Nurse is going off duty.’
‘When I need to be reminded of the nurses’ routine in hospital, I shall say so, Nurse Trent.’
She gave him a kindly, thoughtful look, her previous temper quite forgotten. Probably he was one of those unfortunate people who were always ill-tempered in the early morning. She found that she was prepared, more anxious to make excuses for him.
‘I didn’t intend to annoy you, sir,’ she pointed out to him reasonably, and was rewarded with a sour look and a compression of his well-shaped mouth.
‘The test meal,’ he snapped, ‘when is it complete?’
She looked at her watch. ‘The last specimen is due to be withdrawn in fifteen minutes’ time, sir.’
‘If the patient doesn’t tire of waiting for your return and pull the Ryle’s tube out for herself.’
‘Oh, no,’ said Abigail seriously, ‘she’d never do that—you see, I explained how important it was for her to do exactly as you wish. She has a great opinion of you.’
Just for a moment she thought that he was going to laugh, but she must have been mistaken, for all he said was, ‘I want Mrs Morgan in theatre at noon precisely for gastroscopy. The anaesthetist will be along to write her up. See that she is ready, Nurse Trent.’
He turned to the night nurse, who had been silent all this while, and spoke to her with cold courtesy in his own language. She smiled at him uncertainly, looked at Abigail and flew off down the corridor, leaving behind her the strong impression that she was delighted to be free of their company. Abigail picked up the report book and prepared to go too, but was stopped by the professor’s voice, very silky.
‘A moment, Nurse Trent. I am interested to know what it was you said in the corridor just now.’
She wished she could have looked wide-eyed and innocent, or been so pretty that he really wouldn’t want an answer to his question. She would have to tell him, and probably, as he seemed to dislike her so much already, he would say that he wanted another nurse to work for him and she would have to go back to England. Did one get paid in such circumstances? she wondered, and was startled when he asked, ‘What are you thinking about? I assure you it is of no use you inventing some excuse.’
‘I’m not inventing anything. What I said was,’ she took a deep breath, ‘”Oh, well, be like that.’”
‘That is what I thought you said. May I ask if you are in the habit of addressing the consultants in your own hospital in such a fashion?’
She considered carefully before she answered him. ‘No, I can’t remember ever doing so before, but then, you see, they always said good morning.’
She studied his face as she spoke; perhaps she had gone a little too far, but she didn’t like being treated in such a high-handed fashion. He looked very angry indeed—she waited for the outburst she felt sure would come and was surprised when all he said, through a tight mouth, was:
‘Young woman, you disturb me excessively,’ and stalked away, leaving Abigail with her eyes opened very wide, and her mouth open too.
She didn’t see him again until she entered the theatre and she thought it unlikely that he would notice her, disguised as she was in theatre gown of voluminous size and nothing visible of her face, only her nice eyes above the mask.
The morning’s work had gone exactly to plan. It was precisely noon. Theatre Sister and two nurses were there and of course the anaesthetist—there was to be no general anaesthetic, but Mrs Morgan had had a pre-med and would need a local anaesthetic. He was a nice sort of man, Abigail thought; his English was fluent if a little difficult to understand and he had smiled kindly at her. Mrs Morgan, her hand held in Abigail’s comforting grasp, was dozing in her drug-induced sleep; she had joked a little about it before they went to theatre because she would miss seeing Professor van Wijkelen, and Abigail had consoled her with the prospect of further visits from him, for there were still one or two more tests to carry out, though once the professor had done the gastroscopy and had made up his mind whether he needed to operate or not, there wasn’t much more to be done.
Abigail arranged the blanket over her patient, turning it down below her shoulders so that it wouldn’t get in the surgeon’s way once he started. Mrs Morgan made a little whimpering sound and opened her eyes, and Abigail said instantly in a soothing voice, ‘It’s all right, Mrs Morgan, the professor is just coming.’
He was in fact there, standing behind her, talking quietly to Sister. He finished what he was saying and went closer to his patient, ignoring Abigail completely—something she had expected.
He spoke quietly to his patient. ‘You feel sleepy, don’t you, Mrs Morgan? We are going to spray your throat now and it will feel numb, but you will feel nothing else—a little uncomfortable perhaps, but that is all. It will take only a short time. Your head will be lifted over a pillow now and I am going to ask you to open your mouth when I say so.’
The small examination went well and Mrs Morgan, whom Abigail had expected to be rather difficult, didn’t seem to mind at all when the professor inserted the gastroscope and peered down it, his great height doubled, his brows drawn together in concentration. At length he said, ‘That will do. Kindly take her back to the ward, Nurse.’
Which Abigail did, to spend a rather trying few hours because Mrs Morgan was under the impression that the local anaesthetic would wear off in ten minutes or so, and when it didn’t she was first annoyed and then frightened. Abigail, explaining over and over again that the numbness would disappear quickly and that no, Mrs Morgan couldn’t have a drink just yet, longed for an hour or so off duty. It was already three o’clock; she had been relieved at dinner time, but no one had said a word about her off-duty. Probably the Ward Sister thought that she wouldn’t mind as long as someone relieved her for a cup of tea.
The door opened and she looked up hopefully, unaware that her face plainly showed her disappointment at the sight of the professor standing there, for he certainly hadn’t come to release her from her duties. She got to her feet, wondering why he stared so, and fetched the chart for him to study. He hadn’t spoken at all and since he seemed to like it that way, she hadn’t either. She had half expected to hear more about their morning’s meeting, but now she rather thought that he wasn’t going to do anything more about it. She took the chart back again and stood quietly while he spoke briefly to Mrs Morgan. Presently he turned away from the bed. ‘Nurse, I shall want another blood count done and the barium meal will be done tomorrow at two o’clock. Attend to the usual preparations, please. I can find nothing very wrong, but I shall need confirmation of that before I make my final decision.’
She said, ‘Yes, Professor,’ and admired him discreetly. Forty or more, she concluded, and unhappy—though I don’t suppose he knows it.
His voice, cutting a swathe through her half-formed thoughts, asked:
‘You are comfortable here, Nurse? Everyone is kind to you? You have your free time?’
‘Yes, thank you,’ she answered so quickly that he said at once, ‘Today?’
‘Well, not yet, but I’m perfectly all right. Mrs Morgan is my patient, isn’t she, and the ward is very busy. I’m quite happy.’
He said surprisingly, ‘Are you? I should have supposed otherwise, although I daresay you do your best to disguise the fact.’
She was appalled, and when had he looked at her long enough to even notice? ‘I—I …’ she began, and was instantly stopped by his bland, ‘No need to excuse yourself, Nurse Trent—we all have our worries and sorrows, do we not—and never as important as we think they are.’
Abigail went brightly pink. She blushed seldom, but when she did, she coloured richly from her neck to the roots of her hair. He watched her now with a detached interest, nodded briefly, and went away.
She was relieved shortly after that and after a cup of tea in the dining room she tore into her clothes and went out into the city. The night nurse had explained how she could get to the shops in a few minutes; now she followed the little lanes between the old houses, pausing frequently to make sure that she could find her way back again, and came all at once into a brightly lighted street, crowded with people and lined with shops. She spent half an hour peering into their windows, working out the prices and deciding what she would buy when she had some money. That wouldn’t be just yet; as soon as she had her first pay she would have to send it to poor old Bollinger. She wasn’t happy about his room—it had looked cold and bare and although the landlady seemed kind enough she hadn’t looked too clean, and supposing he were to become ill, who would look after him? She stood in the middle of Kalverstraat, suddenly not sure if she should have left him.
Mrs Morgan stayed in hospital for another three days, becoming progressively more cheerful because it seemed unlikely that she would need an operation after all. Besides, the professor visited her each day and she made no secret of her liking for him. He spent ten minutes or so listening gravely while she explained some new symptom she feared she might have, and then courteously contradicted her, impervious to her undoubted charm and quite deaf to her suggestions that he might, in the not too distant future, pay her a visit at her Long Island home. He seldom spoke to Abigail and when he looked at her it was with a coldness which she admitted to herself upset her a great deal more than it should have done.
They went home on the sixth day, this time in Mr Goldberg’s Buick motor car; the professor had paid a visit the evening before and had stayed a little longer than usual, reassuring Mrs Morgan as to her future health, and had bidden her goodbye with his usual cold politeness, nodding briefly to Abigail as he went away. On her way off duty, half an hour later, she had seen him in the main ward, doing a round with his registrars and housemen, Sister and attendant satellites of students, nurses, physiotherapist and social worker. He looked very important but completely unconscious of the fact, an aspect of his character which she found strangely endearing.
The days following passed pleasantly enough. Mrs Morgan was out of bed now, although she preferred to keep to her room, walking a little and talking incessantly about her flight to the States, which she anticipated with all the impatience of someone who always had what they wanted when they wanted it. Abigail was impatient too—although she damped it down—for pay-day. She had had several letters from Bolly and from the sparse information they contained as to how he fared, she guessed that life was being difficult for him. She had already decided that she would send almost all her money to him, for she was almost certain that Mrs Morgan would ask her to stay another week, perhaps longer, and she didn’t want him to wait any longer for it. The moment she got back to London she would go to the agency again and ask for another job. She reviewed her plans almost daily, and behind all this careful scheming was the thought that she would never see the professor again once she had left Holland. A ridiculous thing to worry about, she told herself scornfully, for she very much doubted if he would notice if she were there or not. She dismissed him firmly from her thoughts and went out each day, exploring Amsterdam.
It was on the morning that she was due to be paid that Mrs Morgan asked her if she would stay another week. ‘I know I don’t really need you, honey,’ she said, ‘but you are such a comfort to have around, and Dolly and Eddy don’t need to worry about me at all. I’ve booked a flight for next week—a week today—if you would stay and see me safely away?’
She opened the crocodile handbag with the gold fittings which looked almost too heavy for her to carry and took out an envelope. ‘Here’s your salary, honey—I got Eddy to see to it for me. You’d rather have the cash, I’m sure. I bet you’ve got your eye on something pretty to buy with it.’
Abigail agreed pleasantly. She had grown quite fond of her patient while she had been looking after her and she saw no point in disturbing her complacent belief that the rest of the world lived in the same comfortable circumstances as herself. She put the envelope in her pocket and picked up the guide book of Holland which she had been reading to Mrs Morgan. Later, when she was free that afternoon, she would go to the post office and send the money to Bollinger, and perhaps now that she knew when she would be finished with the case, she should write to the agency and ask if they had anything else she could go straight to. The problem remained at the back of her mind while she read aloud about the delights of Avifauna and the best way of getting there, she was interrupted half way through by her companion telling her with enthusiasm that she intended to return. ‘Because,’ said Mrs Morgan, ‘this is a sweet little country and I must say some of the people I’ve met are well worth cultivating.’ She giggled happily and Abigail, who knew that she was talking about Professor van Wijkelen, smiled politely and wondered what success she would have in that quarter.
With her patient tucked up for her afternoon nap, Abigail was free to go to her room and open the envelope. There was two weeks’ salary inside and her fare—but only her single fare. She had expected to be given the return fare and had neglected to ask anyone about it. Perhaps she was only entitled to half her travelling expenses; on the other hand, Mrs Morgan might give it to her with her next week’s pay. She put the fare away in her bag, popped the rest into the envelope she had ready and got into her outdoor clothes.
It was cold outside and bleak with the bleakness of January. The clouds had a yellow tinge to them and the wind was piercingly cold. She hurried to the post office some streets away, where there were clerks who spoke English and would understand her when she asked for a registered envelope.
The post office was warm inside. The walk had given her eyes a sparkle and put some colour into her cheeks. She had perched her knitted beret on top of her head and wound its matching scarf carelessly round her throat. She took her gloves off and blew on her cold fingers and went up to the counter.
It took a little while to understand the clerk and then she was so disappointed that she could hardly believe him. She had taken it for granted that she could send either the cash or a money order to Bolly and it seemed she had been hopelessly at fault—she could do no such thing. Go to a bank, suggested the clerk helpfully, where there would be forms to be filled in and a certain amount of delay. But she wanted Bolly to have the money now—within the next day or two. If she waited until she went back herself that was a whole week away—besides, she had promised Bolly. She sighed and the clerk sighed in sympathy and she said, ‘Well, thank you very much for explaining. I should have found out earlier, shouldn’t I?’
‘Can I help?’ The professor—she would have known his icy voice anywhere. She whirled round to face him.
‘Oh, how funny to meet you here, sir. I don’t think so, thank you. It’s just something that was my own silly fault anyway.’
‘Why should it be funny, Nurse Trent? I also write letters, you know.’
‘Yes, I’m sure you do, only—only I should have thought that you would have had someone to post them.’
‘Indeed? I am not particularly interested in your suppositions, but I find this one extraordinary. How can I help you?’
Persistent man, he wasn’t going to take no for an answer. She explained in a matter-of-fact voice and apologised again for being stupid.
‘Why should you be stupid?’ he asked irritably. ‘You were not to know before you asked. How much money did you want to send?’
‘Forty pounds. No—I’ve got to take some off …’ she began to reckon twelve and a half per cent of forty pounds in her head and the amount came different each time she did it. Finally she asked, because he showed signs of impatience, ‘How much is twelve and a half per cent of forty pounds?’
‘Five pounds. Why?’
‘Well, that’s what I have to pay the agency for as long as I work for them.’
‘Iniquitous! It so happens that I am going over to London this evening. I will take the money, since you seem so anxious to send it.’
She stared at him, astonished. ‘But you don’t even … you’re very kind, but I couldn’t trouble you. I shall be going back myself in a week’s time.’
The professor tweaked her out of the queue forming behind her.
‘Ah, yes—I should be obliged if you would remain in Amsterdam for a further few weeks. I have a patient upon whom I shall be operating in ten days’ time, and he will need a special nurse in hospital and probably to accompany him home when he is sufficiently recovered. Your usual fee will be paid you.’
Abigail’s voice sounded a little too loud in her own ears. ‘But you don’t …’ She stopped—what had his personal opinion of her got to do with it anyway? He wanted a nurse and she was available. She answered him with her usual calm good sense, ‘Yes, Professor, I should be quite willing to stay on for as long as you require me.’
He nodded carelessly, as though he had known all along that she was going to say yes.
‘Very well, we will consider the matter settled,’ and when she looked at him it was to find him smiling. Perhaps it was because she had never seen him smile that her heart lurched against her ribs and her breath caught in her throat. It transformed his handsome face into one of such charm that if he had at that moment suggested that she should remain in Holland for the rest of her life, she would probably have agreed without further thought. But her idea wasn’t put to the test; the smile vanished, leaving him looking more impatient than ever.
‘Give me the address of the person who is to receive the money,’ he suggested, ‘and I will see that it reaches him—or her.’
‘Him,’ said Abigail, and would have liked to tell him about Bolly, but quite obviously her companion was anxious to be gone. She handed him the envelope with the letter inside and the forty pounds hastily pushed in with it. She had forgotten about the agency fee, but he hadn’t.
‘Twelve and a half per cent?’ he wanted to know.
He really was in a hurry. ‘I’ll—I’ll take it out of my pay next week. You’re sure …?’
He interrupted without apology, ‘Stop fussing, Miss Trent.’ He stuffed the envelope into a pocket with a nonchalance, Abigail thought vexedly, of a man who found forty pounds chicken feed, wished her a curt goodbye and walked away. She began to walk back to the flat, her head bent against the sneering wind, telling herself that the reason she felt so happy was because Bolly would have the money by the following evening, or at the very least, the morning after.
The professor came to see Mrs Morgan three days later. He paid his visit while Abigail was out for her afternoon walk and left no message for her at all. It wasn’t until the evening previous to Mrs Morgan’s departure that he came again. Abigail was packing her patient’s clothes, surrounded by tissue paper, orderly piles of undies, innumerable hats and an assortment of suitcases. Evidently Mrs Morgan never worried about excess baggage. That lady was reclining on the couch, directing operations; she looked very well and remarkably attractive, which was more than Abigail felt, for her head ached and her usually neat hair was a little untidy, nor had she had the time to do anything to her face for some time, and over and above these annoyances she was worried about Bolly; she had had a cheerful letter from him, thanking her for the money, but she sensed that he was hiding something from her. She was thinking about it now and frowning—she was still frowning when there was a knock on the door and Doctor Vincent and the professor walked in. They both wished her a good evening and she flushed a little under the professor’s brief, unfriendly glance, very conscious that she wasn’t looking her modest best. They stayed perhaps ten minutes, made their farewells and started for the door. But this time Professor van Wijkelen made a detour and came to a halt by her and her pile of luggage.
‘I understand that you will be taking Mrs Morgan to Schiphol tomorrow morning. You will be fetched from there and taken straight to the hospital. Perhaps you can arrange to have your luggage with you.’ His eyes strayed over the ordered chaos around them. ‘I trust you have a good deal less than this.’
‘One case,’ Abigail told him briefly, and he nodded. ‘I will leave a message for you at the hospital tomorrow,’ he stated. ‘Good evening, Nurse.’
He had gone before she could thank him for posting her letter.
Mrs Morgan was actually bidding Abigail goodbye at Schiphol when she interrupted herself to exclaim, ‘There, I knew there was something, honey! I’ve clean forgot to give you your money.’ She made to open her unwieldy bag, but it was too late; a smiling official indicated the passenger conveyor belt which would take her one stage nearer the plane. ‘I’ll post it to you,’ she called, waved and smiled and nodded, and was borne swiftly away; so easy for her to say it, thought Abigail a little forlornly, but where would she send the money to? Mrs Morgan knew that she was going to another job, but she hadn’t asked for any details and Abigail hadn’t volunteered any. Perhaps she would send the money to the agency. If so, would the severe woman who had interviewed her send it on, or would she keep it and expect Abigail to call for it? And what about the rest of her fare—she hadn’t had it yet.
She stood pondering, pushed to and fro by the hurrying people around her. She had been silly; she should have asked for her salary and her fare sooner. But she hadn’t liked to, even though the money was rightly hers. And now she had landed herself with only a few pounds. Supposing the professor had changed his mind about employing her for his next patient? She had been rash enough to buy herself a pair of shoes the day before, and now she was left with less than her fare to England. She moved at last, back to the reception area to fetch her case. She had been foolish twice over; the professor had said that she would be fetched from the airport, but how was she to know who was looking for her? Supposing they couldn’t find her and she was left—supposing they forgot all about her, supposing … Her gloomy thoughts were cut short by the professor’s voice. She hadn’t seen him, but here he was beside her, taking her case from her as relief as well as delight flooded through her, although her quiet ‘Good morning, Professor,’ was uttered in her usual voice. She received an ill-tempered grunt in reply and a brief, ‘Come along, Nurse,’ as he made for the door.
She trotted beside him because otherwise she could never have kept up with him, and to lose him now would be unthinkable. There were a great many cars outside and she wondered which of them was his.
He stopped in front of a black Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow, sleekly and unobtrusively perfect among the other cars, opened its doors, told her to get in with the cold courtesy she had come to believe was the only alternative to his ill-humour, and went to put her case in the boot. He didn’t speak when he got in beside her, and was still silent as he edged the car away from the crowded bustle of the airport and on to the main road. They were tearing along the motorway to the capital when she ventured helpfully:
‘I expect you came yourself so that you could save time telling me about the patient.’
She looked at him as she spoke and he turned to meet her gaze briefly. She wished that he would smile again, but he didn’t, although when he did speak she had the impression that somewhere, deep down inside him, he was laughing. Imagination, she told herself roundly; why should he laugh?
‘A doctor,’ he stated flatly. ‘Professor de Wit, seventy years old. He’s to have a gastroenterostomy—CA, of course, but everything’s in his favour, he’s got a sound heart and chest and a great desire to live. He is to have a room in the private wing and you will be working under Zuster van Rijn with whom you will arrange your off-duty, please.’
Having thus given her the bare bones of the case he fell silent once more, and Abigail, not knowing if he was occupied with the intricacies of the day’s operating list, forbore from disturbing him. It was only when he drew up in front of the hospital entrance and called to the porter to come and collect her case that she said:
‘Thank you for posting my letter. I heard from—that is, it arrived safely. I’m very grateful to you.’
He looked at her with quick annoyance. ‘There’s no need to say any more about it,’ he stated with such finality that she felt snubbed, so that she too was annoyed. ‘I shan’t,’ she told him crisply. ‘Obviously gratitude and thanks are wasted upon you, sir.’
She walked briskly into the hospital, not waiting to see what the porter was going to do about her case. She was half way across the width of the entrance hall when she was amazed to hear the professor laughing. It was a deep bellow and sounded perfectly genuine.
It was surprising to her how quickly she slipped back into the routine of hospital. She had been given the same room again and this time it was so much easier because she knew some of the nurses and they greeted her as an old friend. Zuster van Rijn seemed glad to see her again too; they were short-staffed on the surgical side, she told Abigail, and specialling could be awkward unless there were enough nurses.
‘Will you work as you did before,’ she asked, ‘and take an afternoon off? I know it’s not quite fair that you shouldn’t work shift hours as the other girls do, but that way I can spare a nurse to take over while you’re off duty. There will be the same night nurse as you have already worked with, and you shall have your days off, of course, but how or when I do not know at the moment. You are content?’
‘Quite content,’ Abigail told her. Days off didn’t matter, not for the first week at any rate, for she hadn’t any money to spend. The problem of how to get the money over to Bolly was looming heavily again too; she had done nothing about it because she had expected to return to England, now she would have to start all over again. She dismissed her problems and followed Sister, prepared to meet her patient.
She liked him on sight. He was lying in bed and although his face was pinched and white with his illness, he was still a remarkably good-looking old man. Excepting for a thick fringe of white hair, he was bald, but the fringe encircled his face as well in rich profusion and his blue eyes were youthful and sharp. She shook his hand—gently—because she could see that he was an ill man, and despite his alert expression and merry eyes, probably in pain as well.
Zuster van Rijn left them together after a few minutes and Professor de Wit said, ‘Pull up a chair, my dear, and let us get to know each other. I believe Dominic wishes me to spend a week in bed before he operates, physiotherapy and blood transfusions and all the other fringe benefits of his calling which he so generously offers.’
Abigail laughed with him. So the professor’s name was Dominic—she stored the little piece of information away, though what good it would do her she had yet to discover. She listened to the old man’s placid talk in his slow, almost perfect English and by means of gentle questions of her own found out that he slept badly, ate almost nothing, had lost his wife twenty years previously, had a doting housekeeper to look after him, and a dog and a cat to keep him company, as well as a half-tamed hedgehog, a family of rabbits and a pet raven. They were discussing a mutual dislike of caged birds when Professor van Wijkelen came in.
The two men, she saw at once, were old friends. It was also apparent that the older man trusted the younger completely. He lay listening quietly while the professor told him exactly what he was going to do and why.
‘It sounds most promising, Dominic. I gather I am to be a new man by the time you have finished with me.’
‘Shall we say soundly repaired, and fit for another ten or fifteen years—and that’s a conservative estimate.’
‘And what does Nurse say?’ It was her patient who spoke.
Her smile lighted her ordinary face with its gentleness and sincerity.
‘I never think of failure—Professor van Wijkelen will operate and it will be a complete success, just as he says.’ She looked across at him as she spoke and found him staring at her, and there was no mistaking the faint sneer on his face, but because she liked him, she saw the hurt there too. Someone at some time had turned him into a cold, embittered man; she wondered who it was and hated them. Once, just once, he had smiled at her and she wanted him to smile like that again, but that, at that moment, seemed unlikely.
She settled down to a steady pattern of work, the same work as she would have been doing in a London hospital, even though the language was different, but all the doctors and a good many of the nurses spoke English and she herself, with the aid of her dictionary and a good deal of good-natured help from everyone else, managed to make herself understood. The days passed quickly. Under her patient’s kindly direction she went each afternoon to some fresh part of the city, sometimes to a museum, sometimes to gaze at the outside of some old house whose fascinating history he had described to her delighted ears while she was fulfilling the various duties which made up her day. He was looking a little better, mainly due to the blood transfusions, to which he submitted with an ill grace because they interfered with his movements in bed. He was a great reader and an even greater writer and a formidable conversationalist. Abigail became fond of him, as indeed did anyone who came in daily contact with him. The day before his operation he paid her, handing her an envelope with a word of thanks and a little joke about him being strong enough to do it the following week, which touched her soft heart because although she had complete faith in Professor van Wijkelen, things quite outside his control could go wrong. She tucked the envelope away under her apron bib and as she did so wondered for the hundredth time why Bolly’s last letter had been so strange; asking her not to send him any more money for at least another week. A good thing in a way, because she had not yet discovered the best way of sending it to him, all the same, she felt a vague disquiet.
Professor van Wijkelen came each day, treating her with his usual polite chill, at direct variance to the obvious regard he had for his patient. She stood quietly by while they talked together and longed for the warmth of his voice to be directed just once at herself. A wish which was most unlikely to be fulfilled, she told herself wryly, handing him charts and forms and reports and at the end giving him her own report very concisely in her clear precise voice. He liked to take her report outside the patient’s room and did her the courtesy of giving her his full attention. And now, on this day before he was to operate, he listened even more carefully than usual. When she had finished he said, as he always said: ‘Thank you, Miss Trent,’ and proceeded to give her detailed instructions as to what he wished her to do on the following day.
The operation was a success, although only the next few days would show if the success was to be a lasting one. Abigail had taken her patient to the theatre and remained there to assist the anaesthetist. For a good deal of the time she was free to watch the professor at work. He was a good surgeon completely engrossed in his work and talking very little. When at length he was finished, he thanked the theatre sister and stalked away without a word. He was in his old friend’s room within minutes of his return to it, though. Abigail was still getting the old man correctly positioned and adjusting the various tubes and drip when he came silently through the open door.
‘I don’t want him left, Nurse. I have spoken to Sister—if you wish to go off duty, she will send someone to take over. Is that clear?’
‘Perfectly, thank you,’ said Abigail, and because she was checking the closed drainage, didn’t say any more. She had no intention of going off duty; she had promised Professor de Wit that she would stay with him and she could see no reason why she shouldn’t do just that. She was, when all was said and done, his special nurse. Professor van Wijkelen said abruptly:
‘He’ll do—with careful nursing,’ and turned on his heel and left her.
She didn’t leave her patient again, only for the briefest of meal breaks and the professor came in twice more as well as his registrar, a portly little man whom Abigail rather liked. He spoke a fluent, ungrammatical English and she got on famously with him and she was grateful to him too, because he came often to check on the patient’s condition and cheer her with odd titbits of gossip so that the day passed quickly. It was half an hour before she was due off that Zuster van Rijn came rustling down the corridor to tell her that the night nurse had been struck down with a sore throat and a temperature and wouldn’t be able to come on duty, and there was no one to take her place. ‘I can put a nurse on until midnight, though, and then she need not come on until the noonday shift. Could you possibly …?’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Abigail. ‘I’ll go off at eight, have supper and a sleep and come back here at twelve.’
Zuster van Rijn looked relieved. ‘That is good—tomorrow morning I will get someone to take over while you go to bed for a few hours.’
So it was that when Professor van Wijkelen came at one o’clock in the morning, it was Abigail who rose quietly from her chair near the bed. His glance flickered over her as he went to look at his patient; it was only when he was satisfied as to his condition that he asked curtly:
‘Why are you on duty? Where is the night nurse?’
‘It’s quite all right, sir,’ said Abigail soothingly. ‘Nurse Tromp is off sick and there wasn’t time to get a full-time night nurse. I’ve been off duty, I came back at midnight.’
‘Until when?’
‘Until I can be relieved. Zuster van Rijn will arrange something.’
‘Have you had your days off?’
‘I’d rather not have them until the professor is better.’ She spoke uncertainly because he was looking annoyed again. ‘I imagine that my days off can be fitted in at any time, as I’m not a member of the hospital staff.’
‘You have no need to state the obvious, Nurse. You must do as you please and I daresay Zuster van Rijn will be glad if you remain on duty for a few days until Professor de Wit is on the mend.’
He spoke carelessly as though he didn’t mind if she had her days off or not, and indeed, she thought wearily, why should he?
He went away then and she spent a busy night, because there was a lot of nursing to do and the professor had regained consciousness and wished to be far too active. But presently, after an injection, he dropped off into a refreshing sleep and Abigail was free to bring her charts up to date, snatch a cup of coffee and then sit quietly between the regular intervals of checking one thing and another. It was, she mused, a splendid opportunity to think quietly about the future, but perhaps she was too tired, for when she tried to do so, she seemed unable to clear her mind. She gave up presently, and spent the rest of the night idly thumbing through her dictionary, hunting for words which, even when she found them, she was unable to pronounce.
The professor came again at seven o’clock. Abigail, with the help of another nurse, had made her patient’s bed and sat him up against his pillows; she had washed him too and combed his fringe of hair and his whiskers and dressed him in his own pyjamas. He looked very old and very ill, but she had no doubt at all that he was going to pull through, for he had a good deal of spirit. She was drawing up an injection to give him when Professor van Wijkelen arrived; he looked as though he had slept the clock round, and now, freshly shaved and immaculately dressed, he sauntered in for all the world as though he were in the habit of paying his visits at such an early hour. His good morning to her was brief; so brief that it seemed pointless, but she answered him nicely, smiling from a tired face that had no colour at all, unhappily aware that there was nothing about her appearance to make him look at her a second time.
He didn’t say much to his patient but motioned her to give the injection, walked over to the window and sat down at the table there and began to study the papers she had laid ready for him. He had given her fresh instructions and was on the point of leaving when he remarked:
‘You look as though you could do with a good sleep, Nurse.’
‘Of course she needs a good sleep,’ Professor de Wit’s voice was testy even though it was weak. ‘Just because you choose to work yourself to death doesn’t mean that everyone else should do the same.’
‘I have no intention of working anyone to death. Nurse is doing a job like anyone else and she has a tongue in her head. If she cannot carry out her duties, she has only to say so.’
He didn’t look at her but flung ‘I shall look in later,’ over his shoulder as he went.
‘Such a pity that …’ began her patient, and fell asleep instantly just as Abigail was hopeful of hearing why something was a great pity—something to do with Professor van Wijkelen, she felt sure.
The next few days were busy ones. Her patient continued to improve, but there was a great deal of nursing care needed and Abigail was a conscientious nurse. She took her daily walk because she knew that she needed the exercise in the fresh air, despite its rawness and the bitter wind which never ceased to blow, but her days off she saved up; she would take them when the case was finished. There had, as yet, been no talk of sending Professor de Wit home although it had been made clear to her that she was to accompany him. They would be in hospital another week at least—two probably; if it hadn’t been for the niggling worry about Bollinger, she would have been happier than she had been for a long time. She had made some friends in the hospital by now and she was battling on with her Dutch, helped a great deal by her patient, who now that he was feeling better spent a fair proportion of his waking hours correcting her accent and grammar.
It was the day after the drip came down for the last time and the old man had walked a few steps on her arm that Professor van Wijkelen had come to see him and on his way out again had said in his usual austere way:
‘Nurse, if you are free tomorrow afternoon, I wish you to come with me—there is someone who wants to meet you.’
‘Who?’ asked Abigail, who liked to know where she was.
‘Shall we say you must wait and see?’ he enquired silkily, and then suddenly, as though he sensed that she was about to refuse, he smiled with such charm that she would have agreed to anything he wished. ‘Please,’ said the professor.
She nodded, knowing that when he looked at her like that she wanted nothing more than to please him. She was thoughtful after he had gone and Professor de Wit said nothing, although she had expected him to. When she saw that he didn’t intend to discuss it with her, she launched into an argument on the subjunctive in the Dutch language, concentrating fiercely upon her companion’s learned comments, because Professor van Wijkelen was taking up much too much of her attention these days.
CHAPTER THREE
THE PROFESSOR WAS waiting for her when she reached the hospital forecourt the following afternoon. He greeted her with unsmiling courtesy as he opened the car door for her to get in, and because he so obviously didn’t want to talk, she remained silent as he took the car through the gates and into the narrow streets beyond.
‘You don’t want to know where I am taking you?’ he enquired blandly.
‘Yes, of course I do, but I daresay you wouldn’t choose to tell me, so I shan’t ask.’ Abigail spoke matter-of-factly and without rancour.
‘We are going to my house.’
That startled her. ‘What ever for?’
‘There is somebody you should meet—it seemed the best place.’
‘Oh, I see.’ She didn’t see at all and she was longing to ask him who it was and didn’t because he would be expecting it.
‘Very wise of you,’ he commented silkily, answering her unspoken thought. ‘I’ve no intention of telling you. How do you find Professor de Wit?’
She obligingly followed his lead. ‘Determined to get well as soon as possible.’
‘Yes—I have every hope that he will. The operation wasn’t quite straightforward.’ He launched into details and then said to surprise her:
‘He likes you, Nurse Trent. I hope that you will be prepared to go home with him for a few days?’
‘Certainly,’ said Abigail. There was nothing she would like better, for a variety of reasons, which for the moment at least, she didn’t intend to look into too deeply. She looked about her. They were travelling along the Herengracht, beautiful and picturesque with its old houses on either side of the tree-lined canal. Some way down its length the professor turned the car into a short arm of the canal—a little cul-de-sac, spanned by a narrow footbridge half way down its length. Houses lined the cobbled streets on either side of the water and across its far end, and trees, even in their winter bareness, crowded thickly along its banks.
The Rolls slid sedately along its length and came to a halt outside one of the houses at the end, facing the canal. It was a very old house, with double steps leading to a great door and another, smaller door tucked away under those same steps. The windows were high and narrow and climbed up the front of the house. The higher they climbed the smaller they became, until they terminated in one very large one, heavily shuttered under the steep gable of the house. There was a tremendous hook above it, because that was the only way to get anything in or out of the houses’ top floors.
It was peaceful in the small backwater, away from the traffic, with only the wind sighing around the steeple roofs. Abigail got out and looked around her while the professor opened his house door, and then at his bidding went inside.
It was all she had expected and hoped for, with its black and white tiled floor, its plasterwork ceiling and plain white walls, upon which were hung a host of paintings, and its carved staircase rising from one side.
The furnishings were in keeping—a heavy oak table along one wall, flanked by two carved oaken chairs which Abigail thought looked remarkably uncomfortable, while the other wall held an oak chest upon which reposed a great blue and white bowl, filled with spring flowers.
Abigail rotated slowly, trying to see everything at once. ‘How absolutely beautiful—it’s quite perfect,’ she said, and was instantly sorry she had spoken, because when she looked at her companion he was looking down his long nose at her as though she had been guilty of some offending vulgarity. She went a faint, angry pink, which turned even brighter when he remarked austerely:
‘I feel sure, from the ferocious expression upon your face, that you are on the point of bidding me not to be like that, or some such similar phrase, Miss Trent. May I beg you not to do so—I am easily irritated.’
‘So I’ve noticed,’ Abigail told him tartly. ‘The smallest thing … And now, Professor, if I might meet this person.’ Her eyes swept round the empty hall; the house was very quiet, she allowed her thoughtful gaze to rest upon the man beside her and was on the point of speaking when he interrupted her:
‘No, Miss Trent, I can assure you that there is nothing of sinister intent in my request to you to accompany me here.’ He smiled thinly. ‘You surely could not have seriously supposed that?’
It was annoying to have her thoughts read so accurately. Abigail said crossly, because that was exactly what she had been thinking, ‘No, of course not. I’m not such a fool—you have to be joking.’
He said nothing to this but opened a door and said: ‘Perhaps you would like to wait in here?’
She went past him into a small panelled room, warm and snug in the light of the fire burning in the steel grate. It was furnished in the utmost comfort with a number of easy chairs, leather-covered; a charmingly inlaid pier table against one wall, I small round table, inlaid with coloured mosaic work, conveniently close to the hearth, a revolving bookcase filled with books and a small Regency work-table. The professor pressed a switch and a number of table lamps bathed their surroundings in a delicate pink, highlighting the walls, which she could see were covered with red embossed paper, almost hidden along two sides of the room by the pictures hung upon it, and completely hidden on its third side by shelves of books. The room called for comment, but this time she held her tongue, walking to the centre of the room and standing quietly, waiting for him to speak first.
He didn’t speak at all, but went out of the room, shutting the door behind him, and Abigail for one split second fought an urge to rush to the door and try the handle. Instead, she turned her back on it and went to examine the paintings on the walls. Mostly portraits of bygone van Wijkelens, she decided, who had undoubtedly passed on their good looks with an almost monotonous regularity. She was peering at a despotic-looking old gentleman in a tie-wig, when the door opened behind her and she turned round to see who it was.
Bollinger stood there. She cried on a happy, startled breath: ‘Bolly—oh, Bolly!’ and burst into tears. He crossed the room and patted her on the shoulder and said: ‘There, there, Miss Abby—I gave you a shock, eh? Thought you’d be pleased and all.’
‘Oh, Bolly, I am! I’m so happy to see you, that’s why I’m crying—aren’t I a fool? But how did you get here?’ A sudden thought struck her. ‘In the professor’s house?’ She whisked the spotless handkerchief he always carried out of his pocket and blew her nose and wiped her eyes. ‘Does he know?’
‘Course he knows, love. It’s him as thought to do it. You see, he comes along one night and gives me your letter and the money, and I asks him to have a cuppa, seeing as it’s a cold night, and we gets talking and I tells him a bit about us, and he says to me, ‘’Well, Bollinger, seeing as how Miss Trent’s going to be in Amsterdam for a week or two yet, why don’t you get yourself a little job and be near her?’”
‘”Well,” I says, ‘’that’s easier said than done,” and he says: ‘’I’m looking for a gardener and odd job man for a week or two while my man has his bunions done—how about it?” So here I am, Miss Abby, came yesterday. He paid me fare and I’m to get my wages, so I’m in clover, as they say—no need for you to give me any more money.’
‘It’s fantastic,’ declared Abigail. ‘I simply can’t believe it—do you like him, Bolly?’
‘Yes, that I do, Miss Abby—a bit of a toff, you might say, but a gent all right.’
Abigail blew her nose again to prevent herself from bursting into another bout of tears. ‘Oh, Bolly, it’s like being home again. And of course I shall go on paying you your money—have you any idea how much it is we owe you? Don’t you see, Bolly, I must pay you back now that I know about it and can afford to do so?’
‘Well, if it makes you happy, Miss Abby. How long do you think you’ll be here?’
‘I’m not sure. Another two weeks, perhaps three. What have you done about your room?’
‘I give it up, it wasn’t all that hot. This professor, he says he knows someone in London lets rooms, very nice—a bit more than I got, but if I save me wages …’
‘And I pay you each week while you’re here, and by the time I get back to London and you’re running a bit low, I’ll be in another job and be able to send you something each week.’ She hugged him. ‘Oh, Bolly, it’s all so wonderful, I can’t believe it. Are you happy here? Where do you live?’
‘Here, of course, Miss Abby. I got a room at the top of the house—very snug and warm it is too.’
‘You don’t have to work too hard?’
‘Lord love you, no, Miss Abby—nice little bit of garden behind, and I does the odd job—and I’m to go to his other house in the country once a week and see to the garden there.’
Abigail stood silent, digesting this new aspect of Professor van Wijkelen. ‘Well …’ she began, and was interrupted by the door opening to admit a small round dumpling of a woman with a pleasant face. She shook Abigail by the hand and said in very tolerable English, ‘The housekeeper, Mevrouw Boot,’ and Abigail, mindful of her Dutch manners, replied: ‘Miss Abigail Trent.’
Mevrouw Boot eyed her with kindly curiosity as she spoke. ‘The professor begs that Miss will return to hospital when she must. There is a car at the door in five minutes. He excuses himself.’
She smiled again and went quietly out of the room, and Abigail looked at Bollinger and said with unconscious sadness, ‘He doesn’t like me, you know,’ and had this statement instantly repudiated by Bolly who exclaimed in a shocked voice:
‘That I can’t believe, begging your pardon, Miss Abby—a nice young lady like you …’
‘Well, it doesn’t matter in the least,’ said Abigail with such firmness that she almost believed what she was saying—but not quite, because it mattered out of all proportion to everything else. ‘I’d better go, I suppose it’s a taxi and I oughtn’t to keep it waiting. Come to the door with me, Bolly.’
They crossed the hall, lingering a little. ‘The professor says you’re to come whenever ye’re inclined,’ Bolly explained, ‘but not the days I go to the country.’
She nodded and stopped. ‘All right, Bolly, I’ll remember. I’m very grateful to him. Do you suppose I should write him a letter?’
He looked astonished. ‘You see him, don’t you, can’t you do it then?’
She shook her head. ‘I told you he doesn’t like me,’ and as if to underline her words one of the doors opened and Mevrouw Boot came into the hall and before she closed the door behind her, Abigail and Bollinger had an excellent view of the professor sitting at a desk facing it—the powerful reading lamp on it lighted his face clearly; he was staring at Abigail with no expression, giving her the peculiar feeling that she wasn’t there, and then lowered his handsome head to the papers before him. The door closed and when the housekeeper had gone, Abigail said softly:
‘You see, Bolly? He doesn’t even want to see me, let alone speak.’
She smiled a little wanly, wished him a warm goodbye and went outside. The Rolls was before the steps, an elderly man at the wheel. He got out of the car when he saw her and opened the door, smiling nicely as he did so although he didn’t speak, and she returned the smile, for he had a kind face, rugged and lined—like a Dutch Bolly, she thought as she settled herself beside him for the journey back to the hospital. During the short ride she tried her best to reconcile the professor’s dislike of her with his kindness to Bollinger. There had, after all, been no need to offer the old man a job, even a temporary one. She hoped that Bolly hadn’t told him too much, although she discounted as ridiculous the idea that he might have acted out of sympathy to herself as well as Bollinger. It was all a little mysterious and she gave up the puzzle and began to ask her companion some questions about Amsterdam, hoping that he could understand. It was an agreeable surprise to find that he could, and moreover, reply to them in English.
At the hospital, she thanked him for the ride, wondering who he was and not liking to ask for fear the professor would hear of it and consider her nosey. She went back to her patient with her curiosity unsatisfied, to find him feeling so much better after a refreshing nap that he wanted to know what she had been doing with her afternoon. She told him, skating over the more unexplainable bits, and rather to her surprise he made very little comment, and that was about herself and Bollinger. About the professor he had nothing to say at all.
The days slid quietly by, each one bringing more strength to Professor de Wit. He was to go home in a week’s time, said Professor van Wijkelen when he called one morning soon after Abigail had been to his house, and as he had said it, both he and his patient looked at her.
‘You’ll come with me, Abby?’ asked her patient, who considered himself on sufficiently good terms with her by now to address her so. The professor’s cool, ‘I hope you will find it convenient to go with Professor de Wit for another week, Nurse Trent,’ sounded all the more stilted. She said that yes, of course she would, hiding her delight at the idea of seeing the professor, even if he hated her, for another few days, and the lesser delight of knowing that she would be able to repay Bolly quite a lot of money. She went away to fetch the latest X-rays the professor decided to study, walking on air.
She told Bollinger about it the next day when they met, as they often did, for a cup of coffee and half an hour’s chat. Bollinger, she was glad to see, looked well, and he was happy with his gardening and the odd jobs he was doing around the house. He had been to the country too, but Abigail didn’t press him with questions about this; somehow she felt that the less she knew about the professor’s private life, the better it would be.
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Бетти Нилс
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: Mills & Boon presents the complete Betty Neels collection. Timeless tales of heart-warming romance by one of the world’s best-loved romance authors.SHE WAS A TRUE “SATURDAY’S CHILD”Abigail worked hard for a living. And she expected to go on earning her own living for no man had shown signs of wanting to marry her—least of all the mysterious Professor Dominic van Wijkelen. Certainly he admired her nursing skills. He confi dently asked her to take on his private cases, which took Abigail from London to Holland then Spain.But all he seemed to feel for her was intense dislike! Did Dominic not trust women? Was she too plain? Whatever the reason, there was little Abigail could do about it.