Читать книгу An Unlikely Romance - Бетти Нилс - Страница 4

NOTHING happened, at least nothing to do with Trixie and the professor. A week went by and a most unsatisfactory week it was: Staff Nurse Bennett’s dislike of her manifested itself in a dozen annoying ways; off duty changed at the last minute when Sister Snell had days off, going late to meals because of some errand which really had to be run, constant criticism of whatever she was doing on the ward. Trixie’s temper, usually good, had become badly frayed. It was fortunate that she had days off even though she was late going off duty that evening. She left the ward and started down the stone staircase to the floor below. She would have supper and go to bed early and decide what she was going to do with her precious two days. The parks, she thought; a good walk would improve her temper. November, it seemed, was to be a sunny crisp month, and she needed the exercise. She loitered along, happily engaged in her plans, when the professor’s voice from behind and above her startled her into missing her footing. He plucked her upright and fell into step beside her.

‘I could have broken a leg,’ said Trixie with asperity. ‘Creeping up behind me like that.’ She eventually remembered to whom she was speaking and then mumbled, ‘Sorry, sir, but you startled me.’

He didn’t appear to hear her. ‘You have days off, Beatrice?’

They had reached the floor below and she turned to look up at him. ‘Yes.’

He eyed her narrowly. ‘You are pale and I think rather cross. Has it been a bad week?’

‘Awful. I shall never be a good nurse, Staff Nurse Bennett says so.’

He smiled faintly. ‘She is quite right,’ and at her indignant gasp, ‘I shall explain…’

He was interrupted by one of the path lab assistants. ‘Sir, they are waiting for you. Dr Gillespie is quite ready…’

The professor waved a large hand. ‘Yes, yes, I am on my way. I will be with you in a moment.’ When the man went back up the stairs, he went on walking beside Trixie, who was bent on getting away from him at the earliest possible moment. Halfway across the vast landing she stopped.

‘You’re going the wrong way, Professor,’ she reminded him gently.

‘Yes, yes, I dare say I am, but I wish to talk to you.’

‘They’re waiting for you,’ she pointed out patiently. ‘I should think it’s urgent.’

He said at once, ‘Ah, yes! A most interesting case; a tumour of the medulla—I believe it to be a phaeochromocytoma. This will cause hypertension…’

Trixie, her eyes popping out of her head and quite out of her depth, put a hand on one large coat sleeve. If she didn’t stop him now he’d ramble on happily about the adrenal glands. ‘Sir—sir, you have to go back upstairs. Oh, do go to the path lab. Dr Gillespie is waiting for you.’

He wasn’t listening. ‘You see, the hypertension will give rise to irregular cardiac rhythm…’ He glanced down at her. ‘Why are you looking like that, Beatrice?’

She neither knew nor cared what she looked like. ‘The path lab,’ she urged him.

‘Ah, yes. I have an appointment there.’ He patted her arm in a kindly fashion and turned to go back up the staircase. ‘Be outside at nine o’clock tomorrow morning; we will have a day in the country.’

Trixie asked faintly, ‘Will we?’ but he had already gone, two steps at a time. She glimpsed his great back disappearing on the landing above.

She started on her way again to be brought to a halt by his voice, loud and clear enough for the whole hospital to hear. He was hanging over the balustrade with the path lab assistant hovering anxiously.

‘Wear something warm, Beatrice. I have a wish to breathe the sea air.’

He disappeared, leaving her to continue across the landing and down another flight of stairs and so to her room. She sat down on the bed to think. A day by the sea would be wonderful and the professor was a charming companion, if somewhat unmindful of his surroundings from time to time. From these reflections her thoughts progressed naturally enough to the important question as to what to wear. Not a winter coat, it wasn’t cold enough, and her old quilted jacket wouldn’t do in case they had a meal somewhere. It would have to be the elderly Jaeger suit, timeless in cut, its tweed of the best quality, but, to a discerning female eye, out of date. The professor probably hadn’t a discerning eye, indeed he had observed that she dressed sensibly, which, considering that he had only seen her in uniform and the brown velvet and blue crêpe, proved her point. It would have to be the tweed. This important decision having been made, she felt free to wonder why he wanted to spend a day with her. She refused to take seriously his remarks about her being a suitable wife. He must have friends here in London even if he was Dutch; he had seemed on very easy terms with Colonel Vosper and surely if he wanted a day out he would have chosen someone like Margaret, guaranteed to be an amusing companion besides having a pretty face and the right clothes.

She got out of her uniform slowly, and, no longer wishing for her supper, got into a dressing-gown and went along to the kitchenette to make a pot of tea and eat the rest of the rich tea biscuits left in the packet. Waiting for the kettle to boil, she put her name down for bread and butter and marmalade for her breakfast, which the nurses’ home maid would bring over and leave in the kitchenette. She was hunting round for milk when several of her friends came off duty after supper.

‘You’re not ill, are you?’ asked Lucy. ‘You never miss meals.’

‘I’m fine, I wasn’t hungry. I’ve got days off anyway.’

She wished she hadn’t said that, for Mary asked in her nosy way, ‘Going home, are you?’

‘No.’

‘Got a date?’

She didn’t need to think of an answer for someone said, gently teasing, ‘Of course she has. The Governor of the Bank of England; lunch off a gold plate at the Ritz and dinner and dancing with minor royalty…’

There was a chorus of laughter and Mary said huffily, ‘You all talk such nonsense.’ She thumped down her mug and went away, and presently the rest of them wandered away to wash their hair, do their nails and argue as to who should have the hairdrier first. Trixie nipped into one of the bathrooms before anyone else had laid claim to it, and soaked in the bath, wishing that she had said a firm ‘no’ to the professor’s invitation—not an invitation, really, more an order which he had taken for granted would be obeyed. She was pondering ways and means of letting him know that she wouldn’t be able to join him in the morning when repeated impatient thumps on the door forced her to get out of the bath.

‘You’ve been in there hours,’ said Mary. ‘You’re the colour of a lobster too. You’ll probably get a chill; a good thing you’ve got days off.’

Trixie took the pins out of her hair and let it fall in a soft brown curtain around her shoulders. ‘Yes, isn’t it?’ she agreed cheerfully, and went off to drink more tea with such of her friends as hadn’t gone to bed. Later, in her room, curled up in her bed, she found the chapter on endocrinology and read it carefully. The professor would probably discuss the subject nearest his heart and it might help to sustain a sensible conversation if she had some idea of the subject. She had had several lectures on it; indeed, the professor himself had delivered one of them, using so many long words that she had dozed off halfway through and had had to be prodded awake when he had finished.

It took her a little time to go to sleep, her head being full of any number of facts concerning ductless glands all nicely muddled.

In the light of an early November morning, the whole thing seemed absurd. Nevertheless, Trixie ate her toast and drank her tea and got into the tweed, did her hair and face with extra care, and, as nine o’clock struck, went down to the front entrance.

The professor was there, sharing a copy of the Sun with the head porter. He handed his portion back and went to meet her. His good morning was cheerful if brief. ‘The variety of newspapers in this country is wide,’ he told her. ‘I do not as a rule read anything other than The Times or the Telegraph but I must admit that the paper I have just been reading is, to say the least, stimulating, though I must admit that the advertisements in the Dutch daily papers are even more revealing.’

He ushered her into the car and got in beside her but made no attempt to drive away. ‘It is an interesting fact,’ he informed her, ‘that I find myself able to talk to you without inhibitions.’ He didn’t wait for her reply. ‘Do you know the east coast at all? There is a most interesting village there, once a town swallowed by the sea; it is National Trust property so that we can, if we wish, walk for miles.’

Trixie said faintly, ‘It sounds very pleasant. I don’t know that part of the country at all.’

He started the car and after that had very little to say, not that there was much to say about the Mile End Road, Leytonstone, Wanstead Flats and so on to the A12, but when they reached Chelmsford he turned north and took the road through Castle Hedingham and on to Lavenham, and there he stopped at the Swan Hotel, remarking that it was time they had a cup of coffee. The road was a quiet one, the country was wide and the town was old and charming. Trixie had given up serious thoughts; she was enjoying herself, and, although they had had but desultory talk, she felt very much at ease with her companion. She got out of the car and sat in the old inn, drinking her coffee and listening to his informed talk about the town.

‘Do you know this part of England well?’ she asked.

‘I do, yes. You see, it reminds me of my own country.’ He smiled at her and passed his cup for more coffee.

‘Wouldn’t you like to live in Holland?’

‘I do for a great deal of the time. I have, as it were, a foot in both camps. Do you know the Continent at all?’

‘My aunt and uncle took me to France while I was still at school. Paris.’

She remembered that she hadn’t enjoyed it much because she had had to do what Margaret wanted all the time and Margaret had no wish to look at old buildings and churches, only wanted to walk down the Rue de Rivoli and spend hours in the shops. ‘That’s all,’ she added flatly. ‘I expect you’ve travelled a lot?’

‘Well, yes. I go where I’m needed.’

They drove on presently and now he took the car through a network of side roads, missing Stowmarket and not joining the main road again until they had almost reached the coast, and presently they turned into a narrow country road which led eventually to a tree-shaded area where the professor parked the car. ‘This is where we get out and walk,’ he told Trixie, and got out to open her door. She could see the sea now and the village behind a shingle bank and low cliffs. It looked lonely and bleak under the grey sky, but the path they took was sheltered and winding, leading them into the village street. ‘Lunch?’ asked the professor, and took her by the arm and urged her into the Ship Inn.

He had been there before; he was greeted cheerfully by the stout cheerful man behind the bar, asked if he would like his usual and what would the young lady have?

Trixie settled for coffee and a ploughman’s lunch and sat down near the open fireplace. While she ate it, the professor talked of the history of the village, once a Saxon and then a Roman town, long swallowed up by the sea. Between mouthfuls of cheese he assured her that the bells of numerous churches long since drowned by the encroaching seas were still to be heard tolling beneath the waves. ‘There is a monastery along the cliffs; we will walk there presently and on to the Heath.’

They set out in a while with a strong wind blowing into their faces and the North Sea grey below the cliffs. The surge of the waves breaking on the shingle was almost as loud as the wind soughing among the trees. The professor had tucked her hand into his and was marching along at a good pace. It was evident that he envisaged a long walk. She thanked heaven for sensible shoes and saved her breath. They didn’t talk much until they were in sight of the coastguard cottages and beyond the bird reserve and the wide sweep of the coastline; indeed, it was so windy that just breathing normally was a bit of an effort. Trixie came to a thankful halt at last and the professor turned her round and studied her face.

‘That is better. I think that nursing is not a suitable life for you.’

‘Oh, do you? That’s what Staff Nurse Bennett says; that I’ll never make a good nurse.’

‘An unkind young woman.’ He stared down at her face, nicely rosy from the wind and the sea air. ‘It has occurred to me that I have been over-hasty in broaching the subject of our marriage. Nevertheless, I hope that you have given it your consideration. Perhaps you have a boyfriend of your own or you may not wish to marry?’

His voice was quiet and very faintly accented.

‘Me? A boyfriend? Heavens, no. At least,’ she hesitated, ‘before I started my training, there was a man who was one of Margaret’s friends—Aunt Alice would have liked him for a son-in-law, but for some reason he—he liked me instead of Margaret. That’s why I started nursing…’

It was a meagre enough explanation but the professor seemed to understand it. ‘I see—you say “out of sight, out of mind”, do you not?’

‘Yes, but I didn’t like him anyway…’

‘You have no objection to being married, do you?’

‘None at all,’ she told him soberly, and thought what a strange conversation they were having. Not even a glimmer of romance either, but the professor didn’t strike her as a romantic man; his work was his life, and she suspected that his social life was something he regarded as an unwelcome necessity.

‘So you will consider becoming my wife? I have already explained to you that all I ask is peace and quiet so that I may write whenever I have the time. You will not mind being left to your own devices? There will be times when I shall be obliged to attend dinner parties and similar occasions, but I shall rely upon you to deal with any entertaining which I may be obliged to do from time to time; to deal with the tiresome details, answer the telephone calls and return the visits which are so distracting.’

He looked away from her to the grey sea, and Trixie said in her matter-of-fact way, ‘I expect you are very sought after—there must be lots of girls who would like to marry you.’

He didn’t look at her, although he smiled a little. ‘You would not mind acting as my guardian? I find that young women can be very ruthless in getting what they want.’

It would be worth trying, thought Trixie—a handsome man, still quite young, well known in his profession, well off, she supposed, able to give his wife the comforts of life. All he wanted was to work and write his book. He said to surprise her, ‘I should like to fall in love—it is a long time ago since I did that and now my life is so full and perhaps I am too old.’

‘Pooh,’ said Trixie. ‘Age hasn’t anything to do with it. Get that book written and then you’ll have time to look around you.’

He did glance at her then, although she couldn’t read the look in his eyes beneath their dropping lids. ‘But I shall be married to you.’

‘Ah, yes—but not—not… that is, divorce is very easy these days.’

He took her hands in his. ‘You do understand, don’t you? My work is so very important to me and it has been so for years. So will you marry me, Beatrice?’

‘Yes. I think it might be a good idea. I’m not likely to get asked by anyone else. I like you and I feel easy with you, although I don’t know you at all, do I? I will really try to be the sort of wife you want.’

‘I’m a selfish man…’

‘No. You are driven by your urge to do something you feel you must—like Scott going to the Pole or Hilary climbing Everest.’ She smiled at him. ‘I’ll guard you like a dragon.’

‘I believe you will.’ He flung a great arm around her shoulders and felt her shiver in the wind. ‘You’re cold—how thoughtless of me. We’ll go back. We can stop for tea at Lawshall; there’s a pleasant hotel there.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘I need to be back at Timothy’s by seven o’clock—I’m admitting a woman with exophthalmos, a most interesting case, and I want to make sure that the special treatment is started immediately. I dare say you haven’t come across a case—it is a question of controlling the hyperthyroidism…’

They had begun to walk back and they were going up the path to where the car had been parked before the finer points of the condition had been explained. The professor stopped so suddenly that Trixie almost overbalanced. ‘Oh, my dear Beatrice, I had quite lost myself, do forgive me, I tend to forget…’

It was at that moment, looking up into his concerned face, that Trixie fell in love with him.

The knowledge rendered her speechless but only for a moment, for at the same moment she had realised that this was something which was going to happen time and again and she would have to get used to it. She said calmly, ‘I found it most interesting and you don’t need to apologise, now or ever. The poor woman—I do so hope you’ll be able to cure her.’

They had reached the car and were leaning against its elegant bonnet.

‘I shall do what I can; if the Diotroxin and the radiotherapy fail to halt it, then it will have to be tarsorrhaphy. I will explain about that…’

He was lost again, deep in the subject nearest his heart, and Trixie, getting colder by the minute in the now chilly wind, listened willingly because she liked the sound of his deep voice and he was treating her as someone in whom he could confide. When, at length, he paused, she said warmly, ‘Oh, I do expect you must be anxious to get back to Timothy’s and get started on her.’

He opened the car door and ushered her in, and she at once sank thankfully into the comfort of the soft leather. As he got in beside her she said, ‘We won’t stop for tea if you want to get back.’

He patted her knee in an impersonal manner and sent electric shocks all over her. ‘No, no, there’s time enough. We shall be back well before seven o’clock; that should give you time to tidy yourself while I’m on the ward. I’ll get someone to ring the nurses’ home when I’m ready and we can meet in the hall.’

She turned her head to look at his calm profile. ‘Meet you? In the hall? Why?’

‘I told Mies to have dinner ready for half-past eight…’

‘Who’s Mies?’

‘My housekeeper. I’ve a small house near Harley Street; when I’m over here I have the use of some consulting-rooms there.’ He slowed the car. ‘Here we are at Lawshall.’

The hotel was small, comfortable and welcoming. They ate crumpets swimming in butter and rich fruit cake and drank the contents of the teapot between them, and the professor didn’t mention the endocrine glands once. He talked pleasantly about a great many things, but he didn’t mention their own situation either and Trixie, bursting with unspoken little questions, made all the right kind of remarks and thought about how much she loved him.

They drove on again presently, to reach the hospital with ten minutes to spare. The professor saw her out of the car and walked with her to the entrance. ‘I’ll wait here,’ he told her. ‘I expect to be about an hour.’

He gave her a friendly pat on the shoulder and she said, ‘Very well,’ and walked away towards the nurses’ home entrance because she suspected that he was hiding impatience. In her room she got out of the tweed and combed through her wardrobe, intent on finding something suitable to wear. Not the velvet or the crêpe; she kept those for rare parties. There was a perfectly plain jersey dress buried behind her summer dresses. She had had it for years because it was such a useful colour, nutmeg brown. It had a high round neck and long sleeves and a wide, rather long skirt.

She was ready long before the hour was up so she went down to the sitting-room, relieved to find no one there, and read a yesterday’s newspaper someone had left there. She was doggedly working her way through a long political speech when the warden poked her head round the door.

‘Nurse Doveton, Professor van der Brink-Schaaksma will be ready in five minutes.’ She added severely, ‘I must say I am surprised.’ She eyed Trixie’s heightened colour and sniffed. ‘I didn’t know that you knew him.’

Trixie was pulling on her gloves and making last-minute inspections of her face and handbag. The warden was a sour lady of uncertain years, overflowing with unspoken criticisms of the younger nurses and disliked by them all. Happy in her own small heaven, Trixie wanted everyone else to be happy too.

‘I expect you are,’ she said blithely. ‘I’m a bit surprised myself.’

He was there waiting, and he came across the hall to meet her.

‘Is everything all right?’ she wanted to know. ‘Has she settled in?’

‘Yes, and I think that she will be a good patient.’ He opened the door and they went out to the car and got in.

‘Have you finished for the day?’

He drove out of the forecourt and edged into the evening traffic. ‘Yes. There is nothing much I can do till the morning. I shall have to see her doctor—she’s a private patient—and talk things over with my registrar.’

She had the feeling that just for the moment he had forgotten that she was there. She sat quietly as he drove across London until they reached the quieter streets, lined with tall old houses, leading to equally quiet squares, each with its enclosed garden in the centre.

‘You’re very quiet,’ said the professor suddenly.

‘I was thinking how different this is from Timothy’s…’

‘Indeed yes. My house in Holland is different again. In a small village near Leiden—very quiet. You like the country?’

‘Yes, very much.’

He had turned into a narrow street lined with Georgian houses and he stopped halfway down. He turned to look at her. ‘This is where I live, Beatrice.’ Then he got out and opened her door. She stood and looked around her for a moment; the houses were what she supposed an estate agent would describe as bijou and those she could see clearly in the lamplit street were immaculate as to paint and burnished brass-work on their front doors, and the house they approached was immaculate too with a fanlight over the black-painted door which was reached by three shallow steps guarded by a thin rail. There was a glow of light behind the bow window and bright light streaming from its basement.

The professor opened the door and stood aside for her to go in, still silent, and she went past him into the long narrow hall, its walls white and hung with paintings, red carpet underfoot and a small side-table against one wall. Halfway down its length a curved staircase led to the floor above and there were several doors on the opposite side. It was the door at the end of the hall which was opened, allowing a short stout elderly woman to enter.

The professor was taking Trixie’s coat. ‘Mies…’ He spoke to her in Dutch and then said, ‘Mies speaks English but she’s a little shy about it. She understands very well, though.’

Trixie held out a hand and said how do you do, and smiled at the wrinkled round face. Mies could have been any age; her hair was dark and glossy and her small bright eyes beamed above plump cheeks, but the hand she offered was misshapen with arthritis and her voice was that of an old woan. Her smile was warm and so was her greeting. ‘It is a pleasure, miss.’ She took Trixie’s coat from the professor, spoke to him in her own language and trotted off.

‘In here,’ said the professor, and swept Trixie through the nearest door and into a room at the front of the house. Not a large room, but furnished in great good taste with comfortable chairs and a wide sofa, small lamp tables and a display cabinet filled with silver and porcelain against one wall. There was a brisk fire burning in the polished steel fireplace and sitting before it was a large tabby cat accompanied by a dog of no particular parentage. The cat took no notice of them but the dog jumped up, delighted to see them.

Trixie bent to pat the woolly head. ‘He’s yours?’

‘Mies and I share him. I can’t take him to and fro from Holland—sometimes I am away from here for weeks on end, months even—so he lives here with her and I enjoy his company when I’m here. He’s called Caesar.’

‘Why?’ She sat down in the chair he had offered.

‘He came—from nowhere presumably, he saw us and decided to stay and conquered Mies’s kind heart within the first hour or so.’

He sat down opposite her and the cat got up and went to sit on the arm of his chair.

‘And the cat?’

‘Gumbie.’

Trixie laughed, ‘Oh, I know—from TS Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats.’ She added in a surprised voice, ‘Have you read it?’

‘Oh, yes. I have a copy in my study. Gumbie belongs to Mies; the pair of them make splendid company when I am away.’

‘Mies doesn’t mind being alone here?’

‘There is a housemaid, Gladys. They get on very well together.’ He got up. ‘May I get you a drink? I think there’s time before dinner.’

They sat in a companionable silence for a few minutes then Trixie asked, ‘Do you have to go back to the hospital this evening?’

‘I shall drive you back later and make sure that all is well with my patient. I have an out-patients clinic in the morning, which probably means more admissions, and a ward-round in the afternoon.’

‘You don’t plan to go back to Holland just yet?’

‘Not for some time, but I hope to before Christmas. I’ve some examining to do in December and a seminar in January so I shall be over there for some time. I come over fairly frequently. It is a very short journey by plane and I need only stay for a few hours.’

Mies came to tell them that dinner was on the table then and during the meal the conversation, to Trixie’s disappointment, never once touched on themselves. Had the professor a father and mother living? she wondered, spooning artichoke soup and making polite remarks about the east coast and their day out and going on with the braised duck with wine sauce to a few innocuous remarks about the weather and the delights of autumn, and then with the lemon soufflé, fortified by two glasses of the white Burgundy she had drunk on top of the sherry, and with her tongue nicely loosened, she allowed it to run away with her.

‘I don’t know your name or how old you are or where you live exactly. I should have thought that by now you would have been married. You must have been in love…’

She tossed off the last of the wine and added, ‘Of course you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, only I’d rather like to know, because…’ She stopped just in time, going pale at the thought that she had been on the point of telling him that she had fallen in love with him. She finished lamely, ‘Well, of course you don’t have to tell me. I didn’t mean to be rude.’

‘Not rude—you have every right to know, in the circumstances. Additionally, one day when we have the leisure you must tell me all about yourself. Now let us go back to the drawing-room and have our coffee and I will answer your questions.’

Once more by the fire with the coffee-tray between them, with Caesar’s head resting on the professor’s beautifully polished shoes and Gumbie curled up on Trixie’s lap, he observed, ‘Now, let me see—what was your first question? My name—Krijn, I’ll spell it.’ He did so. ‘It is a Friese name because my family come from Friesland. I’m thirty-eight—does that seem old to you? I have a mother and father, they live in Friesland and my four sisters are younger than I and married, and yes, I have been in love—a very long time ago; I think that you do not have to worry about that. She is happily married in South America, leading the kind of life I would have been unable to give her. I must confess that since then I have never thought seriously about marriage and I am perfectly content with my way of life—or have been until recently when I realised that a bachelor is very vulnerable, and, having given the matter due thought, marriage seemed the right answer.’ He smiled at her. ‘Do I seem too frank? I do not intend to hurt your feelings, Beatrice, but you are such a sensible girl there is no need to wrap up plain facts in fancy speeches.’

She longed to tell him how wrong he was; the most sensible girl in the world would never object to fancy speeches, but all she said was, ‘Thank you for telling me. I’m sorry you—your love-life was blighted…’ It sounded old-fashioned in her ears and she felt a fool, but his face remained placid although his eyes, half-hidden beneath their lids, held amusement. The amusement was kindly; he liked her, he felt at ease with her and she would act as a buffer between him and the determined efforts of his friends and acquaintances to get him married to any one of the attractive girls he met at their houses. He would have more time for his book… and in return she would have anything she wanted within reason and lead the kind of life she deserved. He remembered the strange pang he had felt when she had fallen down in the ward…

‘As soon as I am free I will call upon your uncle and aunt. There is no reason why we shouldn’t be married within the next few weeks, is there?’

The mere thought of it sent her heart rocking. ‘No, no, none at all.’

‘Good. I’ll let you know when I’m free for a day or two. You should have the privilege of choosing the day, should you not? So I will tell you when I can arrange to be away and give you a choice. Will that do?’

She nodded. ‘I have to give a month’s notice.’

‘Don’t worry about that. I’ll arrange for you to leave whenever you wish. You will wish to go to your aunt’s house?’

‘Well, I’m not sure if it would be convenient. Up to now I’ve only gone when I’m invited…’

‘In that case we will have a quiet wedding and you can stay with some friends of mine for a few days before we marry. In a church?’

‘Please. But will they want me?’

‘They’ll be delighted. Your aunt and uncle and Margaret will wish to be at the wedding?’

She took a deep breath. ‘Would you mind awfully if we just got married—just us and two witnesses, I mean, then I could go straight to the church from the hospital? That’s unless you wanted your family to come to the wedding?’

‘I hadn’t intended asking them. We could go over for a couple of days so that you might meet them and I should very much prefer a quiet ceremony if that is what you want.’

‘Yes, it is. I mean it’s not quite like an ordinary marriage, is it?’ Regret that the wedding of every girl’s dreams wasn’t to be for her sent sudden tears to her eyes, but she had no intention of crying. She was going to marry the man she loved and that was all that mattered. He was pleased, she could see that. She glanced at the clock and suggested in her quiet voice that she should go back to Timothy’s, and tried not to mind when he made no effort to keep her. She suspected that, the question of his wedding having been settled, he could turn with relief to his patient’s problems.

He bade her a friendly goodnight in the hospital, waiting until she had gone through the nurses’ home door before going to the wards, forgetting her the moment he reached them. As for Trixie, she undressed slowly, suddenly tired—which was a good thing, for her thoughts weren’t entirely happy—so that she slept before she began to worry.