Читать книгу A Girl Named Rose - Betty Neels, Бетти Нилс - Страница 7

THE EARLY summer sky, so vividly blue until now, was rapidly being swallowed up by black clouds, turning the water of the narrow canal to a steely grey and draining the colour from the old gabled houses on either side of it. The two girls on the narrow arched bridge spanning the water glanced up from the map they were studying and frowned at the darkening sky. The taller of the two had a pretty face, framed by dark curly hair, her blue eyes wide with apprehension; the smaller of the two, with unassuming features, straight pale brown hair piled into a too severe topknot and a pair of fine brown eyes, merely looked annoyed.

“It’s going to rain,” she observed, stating the obvious as the first slow, heavy drops began to fall. “Shall we go back if we can, go on, or find shelter?” She added in a matter-of-fact way, “I haven’t the faintest idea where we are.” She began to fold the map, already wet, but before she had done so the rain came down in earnest, soaking them in moments. Worse, there was a sudden flash of lightning and a great rumble of thunder.

The pretty girl gave a scared yelp. “Rose, what shall we do? I’m soaked.”

Her companion took her arm and hurried her off the bridge. “I’ll knock on a door,” she said, “perhaps there’s a porch…”

The brick road they were on was narrow and the houses lining it were solid seventeenth and eighteenth century town mansions built by wealthy Dutch merchants, their doors massive, their windows symmetrical, presenting an ageless calm in this backwater of Amsterdam, and not one of them had a porch. A second flash of lightning sent the smaller girl up the steps of the nearest house, to bang resoundingly on the great brass door knocker.

“You can’t,” objected her companion; she didn’t answer, only knocked again.

The door opened and she found herself staring into an elderly bewhiskered face; it belonged to a stout man, almost bald except for a fringe of hair with a stern expression and pale blue eyes. She swallowed and drew a breath.

“Please may we stand in your doorway?” she began. “We’re wet and lost.”

Before the man could answer a door behind him opened and shut and a voice asked, “English, and lost?” and said something in Dutch so that the man opened the door wider and stood aside for them to go in.

The hall they entered was very impressive; its black-and-white tiled floor partly covered with thin silky rugs, its white plastered walls hung with paintings in heavy frames; the man who stood in its centre was impressive too, well over six feet tall, with great shoulders and the good looks to turn any girl’s head. Any age between thirty and forty, Rose guessed, wondering if his fair hair was actually silver.

She hung back a little; this was the kind of situation Sadie could cope with admirably; her pretty face and charming smile had smoothed her path through three years of training at the children’s hospital where they both worked; they could certainly turn things to her own advantage now.

“Come in, come in.” The blue eyes studied them sleepily. “Very wet, aren’t you? Give your cardigans to Hans, he’ll get them dried for you and come into the sitting-room while I explain where you are.”

He smiled at them both, but his eyes lingered on Sadie’s glowing face, damp with rain, her curls no less attractive for being wet, whereas Rose’s hair hung in damp tendrils, doing nothing to aid her looks.

He held out a large hand and shook their proffered ones firmly. “Sybren Werdmer ter Sane,” he said briskly. It was Sadie who answered him. “I’m Sadie Gordon and this is Rose Comely.” She smiled bewitchingly at him as he opened a big double door and ushered them into the room beyond.

It was a large lofty apartment, its ceiling was plaster with pendant bosses, and a central recessed oval with a border of fruit and flowers. The windows were large and draped with heavy swathes of plum-coloured velvet, and the same rich colour predominated in the needlework carpets strewn on the polished wood floor. The furniture was a thoughtful mixture of the old and the new. Vast display cupboards flanked the steel fireplace with its rococo chimney-piece and mirror, a pair of magnificent seventeenth-century armchairs, elaborately carved and velvet-cushioned, stood on either side of a small table inlaid with mother-of-pearl. A pair of William and Mary winged settees were on either side of the fireplace and there were a number of lamp tables and small comfortable easy chairs.

A delightful room, Rose thought, but Sadie said at once, “I say, what a simply heavenly room—you’d never guess from the outside…”

“Er—no, I suppose not. Do sit down; I’ve asked Hans to bring you some tea and in the meantime tell me how I can help you.”

“Oh, Rose will explain; we’re hopelessly lost—my fault, I wouldn’t stop to look at the map.”

“Where are you staying?”

Rose answered him in her quiet sensible voice. “At a small hotel called ‘De Zwaan’, it’s close to the Amstel Hotel, down a narrow side street. We got here yesterday, quite late in the evening, and we’re leaving again in the morning. We’re on a package tour; six of us, but the other four didn’t want to explore. We were all right to start with, but these small streets are all alike, aren’t they? Besides, they are so picturesque we just walked on and on…”

“It is so very easy to get lost!” commented their host. “But you aren’t too far out of your way. Will your friends worry?”

“They went shopping and they won’t be back at the hotel until the shops close. We have a kind of high tea at half past six.”

“Ah yes, of course,” murmured Mijnheer Werdmer ter Sane; he had never eaten high tea in his life and indeed was a little vague as to what it was, but there was no need for him to comment further for Sadie, who had been frankly staring around her, wanted to know if the large painting of a family group wearing the stiff clothes of a couple of hundred years earlier were any relation to him. He led her over to take a closer look and when Hans came in a few minutes later with the tea tray, paused only long enough to ask Rose to pour out. “What is it you say in England? ‘Be Mother’.”

She poured the tea from a silver teapot into paperthin china cups, reflecting that no one had ever called her motherly before; homely, plump, dull, uninteresting—all these, repeated so often that they no longer hurt; indeed anything her stepmother said to her now had no effect at all, and even though she was aware that there was truth in what she said, she enjoyed the friendship of a large number of people who didn’t seem to notice her unassuming looks. The others sat down presently and she handed cups and as she did so admired her host’s good manners, and when he turned to her and asked her what she thought of Holland, she answered him unselfconsciously in her pleasant voice. After a few moments she noticed that he was asking apparently casual questions, all of which she answered with polite vagueness, completely wasted from her point of view for Sadie broke in to give him chapter and verse about St Bride’s, with a wealth of unnecessary detail about their training and how they had passed their exams not six months previously and now held Staff Nurses’ posts. “Rose is the gold medallist,” she informed him, “she’s the only one of us with any brains; anyway she studied and we didn’t. There were always other things to do in the evenings when we were off duty.” She added ingenuously, “You know, housemen and the senior medical students.”

Mijnheer Werdmer ter Sane’s blue eyes rested fleetingly on Rose’s face; what he saw there caused him to say kindly, “I imagine that a gold medal is worth at least half a dozen housemen, your family must be very proud of you.”

This tactful remark didn’t have the effect he expected; Rose’s face flooded with colour and then went pale and she mumbled something, luckily lost in Sadie’s chatter. “That’s why we’re here,” she explained, “we’ve been saving up for months to have a holiday—to celebrate, you know. Only a week.” She sighed dramatically. “Back to work in two days’ time.”

She turned blue eyes to him. “You speak perfect English. Have you been in England?”

His voice was smooth. “Yes, from time to time. We are, of course, taught it in school; Dutch is a difficult language so we need to be proficient in the more widely used tongues.”

“You sound like a professor,” declared Sadie.

“Oh, I do hope not. Now shall I explain your street map to you?”

A nicely worded hint that they should think of leaving; Rose got to her feet at once and followed him to the table between the windows and handed him her map, and he took a pen from his pocket, marked a cross on it and then inked in their return route. “So that you will know exactly where you had got to,” he pointed out, “but I hope you will allow me to drive you back to your hotel—there’s always the chance that you will get lost again.” He handed Rose the map and tugged an embroidered bell-rope by the fireplace and when Hans came, spoke to him in his own language.

Hans came back almost at once with their cardigans and their host said easily, “It’s a bare ten minutes drive; Hans will fetch the car round.”

He helped Sadie into her cardigan and answered her light-hearted chatter good naturedly and then turned to Rose. But she was already buttoned neatly into hers, standing quietly with the map in her hand.

“We are very grateful,” she told him gravely. “It’s quite frightening, being lost—and then the storm…but there’s no need for you to drive us back, now we know how to follow the map we can walk quite easily.”

“I am sure that you could, you seem to be, if you will forgive me for saying so, a very practical young lady, but I should prefer to take you back; besides I have enjoyed the company of both of you—the gratitude should be mine for helping me to pass a dull afternoon in my own company.”

Oh, very polished, thought Rose, even if he doesn’t mean a word of it.

They went out into the hall and before Hans opened the front door, she had time to have another quick look round. The staircase was at the back of the hall, thickly carpeted, with barley sugar balusters, curving up gracefully to the floor above; there was a massive chandelier above their heads and a great carved oak table against one wall. It was tantalising to have a glimpse of such a fine house before they were out on the narrow pavement and being ushered into the dignified dark grey Rolls-Royce motor car standing there.

Sadie slid into the front seat, exclaiming prettily that it had always been her ambition to travel in a Rolls, and Rose got into the back, quite content to do so, only half listening to her friend rattling on about one thing and another while she looked out of the window, trying to see both sides at once; she wasn’t likely to come to Amsterdam again for some time, indeed if ever, and she wanted to see as much as could be crowded into their brief stay.

At their hotel they bade their host goodbye, thanked him once more, and Sadie said, “I hope you come to London and we see you again; don’t forget where we are—St Bride’s.” She gave him a beguiling smile as they shook hands. “I think you’d be much more fun to go out with than any of the housemen I know!”

He made some laughing reply and opened the hotel door for them.

Inside Rose said doubtfully, “Sadie, weren’t you a bit—you know…? After all he is a complete stranger…”

Sadie laughed. “Look who is talking—who knocked on his door, then?”

“Well, we had to get in out of the rain and I didn’t know he was living there, did I?” They began to climb the steep stairs to their rooms on the top floor. “The others will be back and I’m famished.”

The rest of the party were milling around the small, plainly furnished rooms gossiping about their day. As Rose and Sadie reached the top landing they surged out of doors, full of questions.

“Where have you been?” demanded a lanky girl with a long face. “We’ve been getting worried; after all, Rose, you’ve got all the plans for tomorrow and the money for the hotel…”

Rose began mildly and was cut short by Sadie’s exuberant voice. “We walked miles and got lost and then there was that awful storm so Rose knocked on the door of a simply huge house and we had tea there and came back in a Rolls-Royce.”

The lanky girl goggled at her. “You’re making it up.”

“It’s quite true,” said Rose composedly. “We did get lost, Alice. Did you have a good time shopping?”

“I’ll say,” a girl with red hair interpolated, “a good thing you’ve got the money to pay the bill here, Rose, I’m skint.”

“I’ll pay this evening, we don’t leave until after lunch, so if there’s any money over we’ll share it out.”

The little group dispersed to tidy for the evening and Rose went into her own room and changed her damp dress for a cotton jersey and did her hair again. Which done she made up her face and then stood peering into the very small looking-glass which hung on the wall. She was undoubtedly a plain girl; not, she conceded, hopelessly so, her skin was good, she had nice eyebrows and her eyes were passable, only her nose was too short and turned up very slightly and her mouth was too wide, and as for her hair…fine and silky reaching to her waist but most uninterestingly pale brown. She pinned it severely to the top of her head and went to join the others. There was no point in her being sorry for herself and indeed she seldom was, but today it had struck her forcibly that no man, certainly not one as handsome as Mijnheer Werdmer ter Sane, would bother to look at her twice. Not that he had ignored her; his manners had been beautiful but she thought that they would have been just as beautiful if she had been an elderly aunt or a chance acquaintance he wasn’t likely to see again.

They trooped down to their high tea and joined the other members of the coach party in the basement dining-room; they were mostly elderly couples with a sprinkling of middle-aged ladies on their own who treated the six of them with a guarded friendliness and greeted them now with looks of mild reproof.

“We spent a delightful afternoon doing the canal trip,” one of the single middle-aged ladies told them. “It’s something you shouldn’t have missed. Most instructive.” She began to enumerate the various sights they had seen, and they, making formidable inroads into the cold meat and ham on the table, murmured and muttered in reply.

“And what did you do?” asked a cosy matron kindly.

“Went to the shops—they are super.” Alice took another slice of bread and buttered it lavishly. “But Rose and Sadie went for a walk and got caught in the storm. They came back in a Rolls-Royce…”

Sadie looked daggers at her but Rose answered composedly enough, “Yes, we were lucky enough to be offered shelter by someone who kindly drove us back here.”

“But you didn’t know him?” one of the single ladies, a wispy faded blonde, asked with faint excitement.

“Not then, we didn’t,” explained Rose in her sensible way, “but we do now. We were lost you see and had to take shelter.”

An old man with glasses pronounced it his opinion, that foreign parts, while interesting, were unreliable. A remark which closed the conversation for the simple reason that it was difficult to answer.

They weren’t to leave until directly after lunch on the following day and since there was enough money over after Rose had paid their bill, the six of them voted to take a trip along the city’s canals. They prudently packed their bags before going to their beds; there would be ample time in the morning for sight-seeing, but much as they had enjoyed their brief stay they had no wish to be left behind with almost no money in their pockets.

They got themselves up early, had the coffee and rolls and cheese the hotel provided and made a brisk beeline for the Central Station from which the boats left.

There weren’t too many people about at nine o’clock in the morning; they got on to one of the first boats to leave and settled down to enjoy themselves.

It was a splendid morning and the old houses, viewed from the water, looked at their very best. They viewed the smallest house in the city, the Munt, and the patrician houses lining the canals, with suitable interest while the guide, switching from English to German to French with enviable ease, pointed out the highlights of the trip. They were back again soon after ten o’clock and trooped down Damrak to the Dam Square, intent on coffee before they went back to the hotel. They were waiting to cross the square, thick with traffic and noisy little trams when Sadie caught Rose by the arm.

“Look,” she cried loudly. “There he is, over there…”

Too far away for him to see them, Rose judged, watching the Rolls slide between two trams with Mijnheer Werdmer ter Sane at the wheel. Besides, what would be the point, even if he did? They weren’t going to meet again.

They lunched at the hotel, cheese rolls and coffee because the hotel didn’t cater for cooked meals at midday, and then they boarded their coach. Rose felt a twinge of regret as they were driven through the city’s heart and its suburbs; streets of neat houses and flats, all exactly alike and not in the least resembling the lovely old houses in the centre of the city. At least she had investigated the inside of one of them, and very nice it was too. She allowed her thoughts to dwell on the pleasures of living in such a house, lapped around with comfort, no, not comfort, luxury. She said out loud, “I wonder if he was married?”

Sadie, sitting beside her, chuckled. “Well, of course he would be—I daresay he had a handful of children too, on the top floor with Nanny.”

Rose was surprised to find that the idea quite upset her.

The coach kept to the motorway, giving her little time to do more than glimpse the villages to be seen on either side of it. “Next time I come, if I ever do,” she told Sadie, “I shan’t go on a single motorway; I’m sure there is heaps to see.”

“Well, I don’t suppose you’ll come again,” said Sadie comfortably; she sounded faintly smug; more or less engaged to a solid young man with his feet firmly on the first rung of banking, her own future was already cut out for her. She added, “I mean, you are sure to get offered a sister’s post—there’s Sister Coutts on children’s medical due to retire, and the junior night sister leaving to get married at Christmas.”

Rose resolutely brushed away the vague daydreams floating around inside her head. She didn’t much care for medical nursing and nor did she like night duty; she would like to work on the children’s surgical ward, but chance was a fine thing; the ward sister there was young enough to be there for another twenty years, and certainly had no intention of marrying. Rose consoled herself with the thought that she might be going there as a staff nurse. Perhaps when she had more experience she would look for a sister’s post at another hospital, as far away from her home as possible. Not that it was home any more. Even after two years it hurt to think of her father; they had lived so happily together after her mother died until quite out of the blue, just after she had started training, he had told her that he was going to marry again.

Her stepmother was still quite young, a well preserved forty, with a pretty face and a charm which she lavished on Rose when there was anyone there to see it. They had disliked each other on sight, but Rose had done her best to understand her father’s remarriage and had tried hard to like her stepmother. It wasn’t until her father died suddenly and her stepmother married again within six months of his death, that Rose admitted to herself that she didn’t like her and never would. She couldn’t stand Mr Fletcher, a tall thin man, who doted on her stepmother but treated Rose with cold severity. It was like having two strangers in her home and during the following year she had gradually stopped spending her days off and holidays there, feeling an interloper each time she went to the village near Tunbridge Wells. Instead she had answered her mother’s elder sister’s invitation to visit her and now she felt more at home there in Northamptonshire. Her aunt lived at Ashby St Ledgers, in a comfortable little house, a rather sterner version of Rose’s mother, but kind and affectionate and ready to welcome her niece. She was an enthusiastic gardener, a staunch supporter of the church and had a finger in every village pie and was looked after by a little dumpling of a woman Rose remembered from her childhood when she had been taken on a visit to Aunt Millicent. Both ladies, in their way, made much of her, her aunt in an off-hand manner which didn’t quite conceal her very real affection, and Maggie with a cosy warmth made apparent by the nourishing meals she dished up and the hot milk she insisted Rose should take to bed each night.

“I’d like to see more flesh on your bones,” she would mutter, pressing the nourishing drink into Rose’s hands when she went to bed, and each time Rose went to stay, she would return with a large cake in her case; devoured with gratitude by Rose and her friends the moment it was unpacked.

She thought of her aunt now; she would be going to see her in a few weeks’ time but first she would have to settle down on whichever ward she was sent to. Hopefully back on children’s surgical, she had been there for three months as a student nurse and loved it. She turned to say something to Sadie but that young lady was asleep, her pretty mouth slightly open, her curls, rather untidy now, framing her charming face. No wonder the Dutchman had been so taken with her, thought Rose, quite without envy.

The bus stopped just before they reached Zeebrugge and they all got out and had tea and a biscuit; the tea—a teabag in a saucer with a glass of almost boiling water, and no milk, was refreshing but not at all like the dark strong brew they shared in each other’s rooms when they came off duty. They were off again within fifteen minutes and shortly after went on board, where they left everything in the bus and climbed the stairs to the upper decks. They knew the journey would take four hours and there was still the drive to London from Dover; they wouldn’t be at the hospital until midnight at least. Luckily none of them were on duty until one o’clock the next day. Their main thoughts were now centred on food. Lunch had been light and hours ago; Rose counted what was left of the money and then shared it out between the six of them. There wasn’t a great deal, not enough to go to the restaurant with the other travellers in the coach, but there was a cafeteria on board. They trooped along its counter, getting value for their money, spending it on rolls and butter, cheese, hardboiled eggs and cups of tea.

It had been great, they all agreed, sitting round a table, munching, for the most part the food had been good and generous; they had seen a lot and their fellow passengers had been friendly.

“But next time I go,” declared Sadie, “I’ll travel by car and eat all the time at those heavenly restaurants we saw and never went into. I’d like to spend at least a week in Amsterdam, wouldn’t you, Rose?”

Rose drank the last of her tea. “Oh, yes—but I’d like to see a lot more of Holland too. But Amsterdam was smashing.”

Alice said slyly: “I bet you’d like to meet that Dutchman again…”

“Yes I would.” Rose spoke readily enough in her composed way. “One meets someone and wonders about them and that’s as far as it goes. Shall we go on deck for a bit? We’ll have to sit in that coach presently.”

It was most fortunate that the coach went within a hundred yards of St Bride’s and the driver, being a kind man, took them almost to the door. They tumbled out, exchanging goodbyes with the other passengers, collected their cases, thanked the driver, handed him the tip Rose had been jealously guarding, and hurried across the street from the hospital to the Nurses’ home. The warden on duty let them in with a good deal of shushing and requests to be quiet, and rather dampened in spirits, they went softly up the stairs to the second floor where the staff nurses had their rooms. They did not linger over getting ready for bed; there was a brisk to-ing and fro-ing in competition for baths, quick good nights and then sleep. Rose, laying her head in a cloud of soft brown hair on her pillow, spared a thought for the Dutchman and then resolutely shut him out of her mind. The last few years had taught her to make the best of things and try to improve on them if possible, and never, never, to waste time on wanting something she couldn’t have: to see him again. She closed her eyes and slept.

There wasn’t much leisure in the morning; they got up for breakfast for the simple reason that if they didn’t they would be hungry, but it was a cheerful rather noisy meal, for everyone wanted to know about their trip. Besides there was the hospital gossip to catch up on, and once they were back in their rooms, there was the unpacking to do, clean caps to make up and another pot of tea, made in their own little pantry, and by then it was time to go to the office, one by one, to be told where they were to go on duty.

There were no surprises for Rose; staff nurse on children’s surgical and she was to report to Sister Cummins at one o’clock. As an afterthought she was asked if she had enjoyed her holiday, to which she made a suitable reply before getting herself tidily out of her superior’s presence.

Sister Cummins seemed pleased to see her; she was a big, vigorous young woman, quite wrapped up in her work and a splendid nurse. She had no use for nurses who weren’t prepared to work as hard as she did, and made a point of saying so, so that she wasn’t popular, but Rose got on well with her, going calmly about her work and refusing to take umbrage at some of Sister Cummins’ more caustic remarks. And as for the children, they got on splendidly together; she settled down quickly into the chaotic routine of the ward, and if, just now and again, her thoughts turned to the lovely old house and its handsome owner in Amsterdam, she shook them off briskly.

The ward was very busy, for the hospital did a good deal of major surgery in the paediatric wing; very small patients with heart conditions, cystic hygroma which had become infected and needed surgical treatment, pyloric stenosis, club feet, hydrocephalus. Rose, trotting quietly to and fro between the cots, had her heart wrung a dozen times a day and yet her days had their lighter moments too. The convalescent children, full of good spirits, were as naughty as she could wish and Sister Cummins, once they were on the road to recovery, didn’t believe in checking them more than was necessary. There was a play-room where they were taken each day under the care of two of the nurses and they screamed and shouted and played together and more often than not, fell asleep. Rose never had much time to spend in the play-room, there were so many ill children to nurse, but it pleased her to hear the normal racket even if it did give her a headache by the end of a busy day.

She was to have a long weekend in a week’s time; the two weeks she had already done on the ward had flown and although she had had days off she hadn’t gone away. She hadn’t heard from her stepmother but she hadn’t expected to, she sensed that she wouldn’t be welcome if she went to her home. Besides, there was nothing for her there any more. It would be nice to see Aunt Millicent and Maggie again; she would help in the garden and take her aunt’s old dog, Shep, for gentle walks and eat huge meals.

It had been more than a full day; three operations and a street accident. Rose, going off duty over an hour late, looked as tired as she felt. A long hot bath, and never mind supper, she decided, she could make tea for herself and there were some biscuits in the tin and perhaps if one of her friends felt like it she would nip down the street to the fish and chip shop and get a bag of chips.

Head well down, she ran down the wide stone staircase leading to the front hall; there wasn’t anyone about; those who had an evening off had gone long ago, those on duty were busy seeing to suppers, hurrying to be ready in time for the visitors in half an hour. She jumped the last two steps and ran full tilt into the man standing at the foot of the stairs.

She had butted him in the waistcoat and her head shot up. Not, for heaven’s sake, one of the consultants. It wasn’t, it was the Dutchman, quite unshaken, smiling down at her.

“Well, well,” he said pleasantly, “Nurse Comely, literally bumping into me.”

She blushed, hating herself for doing so, unaware that the colour in her cheeks made her almost pretty. She said nervously: “Oh, hullo, Mijnheer Werdmer ter Sane. What a surprise. Have you come to visit someone?”

He was smiling a little. “Yes, are you going off duty?”

It was silly of her heart to leap so violently, and even sillier that she had thought even for a split second that he was going to ask her to spend the evening with him. She must be mad. She said soberly, “Yes, I am. Very late. We’re busy today.” She added succinctly: “Children, you know.”

“Ah, yes.” He stood for a moment, not speaking, and she saw that he wanted to go but didn’t want to be too abrupt about it.

“Well, I must hurry,” she told him brightly. “I’m supposed to be going out.” She held out a hand. “It was nice to see you again, goodbye.”

He shook her hand gently and said just as gently, “Indeed, a pleasant surprise for me, too, Nurse.”

She gave him a quick smile and crossed the hall very fast and went out of the door to cross the road to the nurses’ home. Now if she had been Sadie she would have managed better; turned on the charm, made some amusing remarks…only she wasn’t Sadie. She went to her room and not allowing herself to brood, undressed, lay in the bath until impatient thumps on the door got her out of it, drank her tea in the company of such of her friends as were off duty too, and went to bed early, pleading a headache.

She wasn’t allowed peace and quiet for long. Sadie, coming off duty a couple of hours later, burst into her room with an excited, “Rose, Rose, wake up, do. He’s here—our Dutchman, I’ve just met him in the hall and guess what, he’s a surgeon and knows old Cresswell—” Mr Cresswell was the senior consultant at the hospital, an elderly grumpy man who somehow became a magician once he had a scalpel in his hand “—I asked him why he was here.”

“You didn’t,” expostulated Rose in horror.

“I did. Why not? And he said I’d know soon enough. What do you suppose he wants?”

Rose sat up in bed and hugged her knees. “Sadie, I don’t know. Probably to consult with someone, or give a lecture or borrow something.”

“He remembered me,” said Sadie, ignoring this remark. “He said, ‘Ah, my charming visitor.’ He told me he was delighted to see me again. I hope he’s here in the morning. He might ask us out to lunch or a drink or something.”

Rose eyed her friend soberly. “You perhaps, not me, and anyway, it might not be quite the thing; he’s much more likely to have lunch with old Cresswell and the other consultants.”

Sadie grinned at her. “The trouble with you, Rosie, is that you have no romance in you, not one ounce.”

Rose curled up in bed. “Well, let me know what happens. We’ll both be at first dinner tomorrow.”

It was half way through the morning when Sister Cummins came down the ward to where she was bending over one of the cots, adjusting an intravenous drip. “Staff, will you go to the office? Now. Miss Timms wants to see you.”

“Me, heavens, whatever have I done?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. I’ll take over here. Leave your apron in my office and tidy your hair.”

Two minutes later Rose, hair smoothed beneath her muslin cap, went as fast as she dared without actually running through the labyrinth of passages to the centre of the hospital where Miss Timms had her office, tucked away behind an outer office, guarded by her two assistants. There was another door to her office too, opening directly on to the passage Rose was racing along. As she reached it she skidded to a halt. Miss Timms had a loud voice. “I’m sorry that I must disappoint you, Mijnheer Werdmer ter Sane, Nurse Gordon is a very good nurse and I agree with you that she has a pleasant manner, but she isn’t very skilled in the nursing of children and toddlers. Now Nurse Comely is our gold medallist and is at present staffing on the acute children’s ward; she has already spent some months there during her training and is absolutely trustworthy and highly skilled.”

Rose was standing like a statue; quite forgetful that it was a most reprehensible thing to eavesdrop; moreover, listeners never heard good of themselves, a fact borne out by the Dutchman’s remark. His voice wasn’t as loud as Miss Timms’, but it was deep and very clear; she didn’t miss a syllable.

“Then I must bow to your good advice,” he was saying. “I am sure that if you recommend her so highly, Nurse Comely will suit the case very well. But it seemed to me that she lacks a certain light-heartedness—she is a very quiet girl, is she not?”

Miss Timms didn’t answer at once, and Rose held her breath and beat down her sudden rage. Quiet was she, lacking in light-heartedness, was she? Why didn’t he go all the way and say that she was plain?

“Not a girl that one would notice,” pursued Mijnheer Werdmer ter Sane blandly, “but of course she will spend a good deal of time with her patient. You see, Miss Timms, I had hoped for someone who would be able to cheer up the child’s mother—distract her thoughts and so on, and it seemed to me that Miss Gordon filled the bill.”

Rose ground her splendid little teeth and let out a breath as he went on, “But I bow to your wisdom—if I might have a few words with her?”

“She should be here by now.” Miss Timms’ voice held a faint triumph at getting her own way. It also sent Rose soft-footed past the door, to tap on the outer office and be admitted, to be urged into Miss Timms’ office without more ado.

After living for several years with her stepmother, she had learnt to hide her feelings. She was slightly pale and she was breathing rather fast but that could be put down to her sudden summons. She said politely, “Good morning, Miss Timms, you wanted to see me?” and then, “Good morning, Sir,” in a colourless voice. Her glance was so quick that she didn’t see his sudden sharp look which was perhaps a good thing.