Читать книгу Fate Takes A Hand - Betty Neels, Бетти Нилс - Страница 7

THE little flower shop, squeezed between two elegant boutiques, was empty save for a girl in a cupboard-like space at its back, making up a bouquet. It was a charming bouquet, of rose-buds, forget-me-nots and lilies of the valley, suitable for the littlest bridesmaid for whom it was destined, the last of six which she had been left to fashion while the owner of the shop had gone off on some mission of her own. She was tying a pale pink ribbon around it when the shop door was thrust open and a customer came in. A giant of a man, elegantly dressed, no longer young, and wearing a look of impatient annoyance upon his handsome features.

He came to a stop in the middle of the floral arrangements and said curtly, ‘I want a couple of dozen roses sent to this address.’

‘Red roses?’

‘Certainly not. Yellow—pink, it really doesn’t matter.’

He stared at her, and really she was worth being stared at: a big girl with generous curves, short dark curly hair, large grey eyes and a pretty face.

He said abruptly, ‘What is your name?’

‘Eulalia Warburton,’ she replied promptly. ‘What is yours?’

He smiled thinly. ‘The roses are to be sent to this address.’ He handed her a card. ‘How much?’

‘Fifteen pounds and two pounds for delivery.’ She glanced at the card. ‘This afternoon—this evening? Tomorrow?’

‘This evening, before six o’clock. Make sure that they are fresh…’

She gave him an outraged stare. ‘All the flowers in this shop are fresh.’

She took the money and thumped the cash register with some force. Thoroughly put out, she said snappily, ‘If you doubt it, have your money back and go somewhere else.’

‘Dear, dear.’ He spoke with infuriating blandness. ‘Are you having a bad day?’

‘It was a perfectly good day before you came in,’ she told him. A good thing Mrs Pearce wasn’t here—she would have been given the sack on the spot. She handed him an ornate little card. ‘You will wish to write a message?’

She took it back when he had written on it, handed him his change and bade him a coldly civil good day. She got a grunt in reply.

She watched his broad back disappear up the street and took a look at the card. It was to a Miss Ursula Kendall and, after a careful scrutiny of his scrawled message, she gathered that he was sending his apologies. Well, thought Eulalia, if he was as rude to her as he had been here, a nice piece of jewellery would be more in order.

She finished her bouquet and began to arrange the yellow roses in their Cellophane sheath; somehow pink didn’t go well with a name like Ursula.

Mrs Pearce came back presently, approved of the bouquets and, since it was almost time to close, told Eulalia to deliver the roses. ‘I know it’s out of your way, so take a taxi—the money’s in the till.’ She bustled around, rearranging this and that. ‘You’ll have to take the bouquets round in the morning. Half-past nine— another taxi, I suppose—but it’s a good order.’

It had been a pleasantly warm June day, but now that the afternoon was slipping into early evening there was a cool breeze. Eulalia donned a navy blue jacket over her navy and cream patterned dress, gathered up the roses and left the shop, taking a breath of air as she waited for a taxi. Even there, in London, from time to time one had a faint whiff of really fresh air.

The roses were to be delivered to an address close to Eaton Square. She paid the driver and mounted the steps to the front door of a Georgian terraced house. The girlfriend, if it was a girlfriend, lived in some style, thought Eulalia, and pressed the bell. The door was flung open at the same moment and a young woman stood frowning at her.

‘I’m just going out…’

She was a handsome girl. Her features were too strong to be called pretty but she had beautifully dressed fair hair and large blue eyes, which for the moment held no warmth; moreover, she was dressed in the very height of fashion.

‘Miss Kendall?’ asked Eulalia sweetly. ‘I was asked to deliver these to this address before six o’clock.’

Miss Kendall’s perfectly made-up mouth thinned. She snatched the flowers and tore open the little envelope attached to them, glanced at the note and pushed the flowers back into Eulalia’s arms. ‘Throw them with the rubbish,’ she demanded angrily. ‘If he thinks he can—’ She stopped. ‘And don’t just stand there—take the beastly things and go!’

‘I simply cannot throw them in the bin,’ said Eulalia firmly. ‘They’re fresh and beautiful.’

‘Then take them home with you—eat them for your supper for all I care.’ Miss Kendall turned suddenly and went into the house and banged the door.

They deserved each other, decided Eulalia, walking briskly to the nearest bus-stop. She hadn’t liked her ill-tempered customer; she didn’t like Miss Kendall either. A well-matched couple. She dismissed them from her mind and boarded a bus to take her home.

Home was a basement flat in Cromwell Road—not the best end by any means, but it was on the edge of respectability and the flats in the rest of the house were occupied by quiet people. It was dark and poky but it had a narrow strip of garden at the back and she had been lucky to get it. It was a worrying thought that the five-year agreement she had would run out before the autumn, but she had been a good tenant and she hoped that the landlord would renew it and not put the rent up. She tried not to think what she would do if he did that…

She went down the steps and opened the narrow door. The room beyond was fair-sized, with a window at the back as well as the barred one beside the door, and it was nicely furnished with chairs and tables and a heavy sideboard which must have come from a larger house. The curtains were chintz, drawn back from the netcurtained windows, and the floor was covered with a rather fine if shabby Turkish carpet. There were two doors along the inner wall, and one of them opened now to reveal a boy of eight or so, who came through followed by an elderly woman with rosy cheeks and a round face crowned by grey hair strained back into a bun.

Eulalia put down the roses and hugged the boy. ‘Hello, Peter, have you had a good day at school? Tell me about it presently. Trottie, dear, I’m sorry I’m a bit late. I had to deliver these but they weren’t wanted, so I brought them home.’ She laid the roses down on a table, one arm round the boy. ‘Did that man come about the leak in the bathroom?’

‘That he did, Miss Lally, and a fine mess he left behind him too. Said he’d send the bill. Supper’s ready when you are.’

‘Two ticks,’ said Eulalia, and went through the door to a narrow lobby with three doors. She opened one of them and, with Peter still with her, went into her room. It was very small, with one window, barred like all the others, but there was a colourful spread on the narrow bed, and cushions and a pretty bedside lamp. She hung her jacket in the corner cupboard, peered at her face in the old-fashioned looking-glass and said cheerfully, ‘Let’s have supper. I’m famished, and Trottie will have some thing delicious…’

Trottie had laid the table under the back window, and Eulalia went through the second door into the narrow kitchen and helped carry through the toad-in-the-hole and jacket potatoes, while Peter filled their glasses with water. It was a simple meal but eaten off old and beautiful china salvaged from her old home, as were the knives and forks and spoons, rat-tailed eighteenthcentury heavy silver. Trottie wrapped them up carefully each evening and put them in a felt bag and hid them under her mattress. The discomfort was worth it, she had observed, for if they should be burgled even the worst of villains would hesitate to get an elderly lady out of her bed. Eulalia wasn’t sure about that but she forbore to say so.

She found it a cheerful meal, listening to Peter’s comments on his day at school, exchanging gentle gossip with Trottie, telling, with a wealth of detail, of the customer who had bought the yellow roses and how they had been rejected.

‘They must have cost a pretty penny,’ observed Trottie, and when Eulalia told her she said, ‘My goodness gracious, we could eat like fighting cocks for a week on that.’

‘What’s fighting cocks?’ said Peter, which led inevitably to the vexed question as to whether it would be unkind to have a rabbit in a hutch in the garden. They had decided against a dog long since, for there was no one to take him for walks. Eulalia was out all day, Trottie had the house to see to and Peter was at school. Even a cat would be risky, with so much traffic along the busy road.

‘As soon as I’ve made my fortune,’ said Eulalia, ‘we’ll move to a very quiet road with trees and big gardens and we’ll have a cat and a dog and a rabbit too.’

‘I suppose we couldn’t go to the country?’ asked Peter wistfully.

A wish she silently echoed. Oh, to be back in her old home in the Cotswold village where she had been born, in the nice old house to which her grandmother had whisked her when her parents had died in a car crash. She had been eight years old then and had spent the rest of her childhood there, and later, when her grandmother had grown frail, she had taken over the housekeeping with Miss Trott’s aid. It was only on the old lady’s death that she had discovered that the house was mortgaged and that there were debts…

She had paid them off and then, with Miss Trott’s staunch company, had set off for London with the small amount of money she had salvaged and the promise of a job in the flower shop run by a sister of one of her grandmother’s old friends.

She had laid out most of her money on the flat, its rent low because of the recession, signed a lease for five years and, with her wages and Miss Trott’s pension, they had carved a life for themselves. It wasn’t much of a life but neither of them complained; they had a roof over their heads and enough to eat. It had been towards the end of the third year that she had had a letter from her grandmother’s solicitor. A cousin—one she had never known that she had—and her husband had been killed in a plane disaster, leaving a small boy. There were no members of the family save herself, and was she prepared to give the boy a home?

She had gone to see the solicitor and was assured that the facts set out in his letter had been true; the child, unless she was prepared to give him a home, would have to go to an orphanage. There was a little money, she had been told, enough to send him to prep school and, provided he could win a scholarship, pay for his further education. Of course she had agreed to have him, her kind heart wrung by the thought of the lonely little boy, and she had never regretted it. Between them, she and Trottie had helped him with his grief, found a decent school not too far away from the flat, and turned themselves into a family.

They finished their early supper, discussing quite seriously where it would be nice to live, the puppy they would have, a kitten or two and a rabbit—because of course the garden would be large enough to house all three…It was a kind of game they all played from time to time, Peter firmly of the opinion that one day it would all come true, while Eulalia and Trottie hoped for the best. Miracles did happen, after all.

Eulalia helped Peter with his homework presently, while Trottie cleared away the supper things, and when that was done they read a chapter from The Wind in the Willows together before a noisy bath-time in the minute bathroom leading off the kitchen. Peter went to bed, and once he was asleep Eulalia sat down at the table to do her anxious sums and count the money in the house. They managed, the pair of them, to keep their heads above water but there was never any money over. Peter was growing fast, the children’s allowance was barely enough to keep him adequately clothed, and as for shoes…

She sat chewing the top of her ballpoint, ways and means for the moment forgotten, while she admired the roses displayed in a vase on the sideboard. Which, naturally enough, led her to think of the man who had bought them. He might, even at that very moment, be with his Ursula, apologising abjectly…No, he wouldn’t! she corrected herself. He wouldn’t know how to be abject…Then, neither would his Ursula. They would stare coldly at each other, concealing bad tempers in a well-bred manner. ‘And good luck to them,’ said Eulalia, so loudly that Trottie jumped and dropped a stitch of her knitting.

Eulalia had to explain about the rejected roses when she got to the shop in the morning. ‘It was too late to bring them back, and besides, Miss Kendall tore the wrapping.’

‘Can’t be helped,’ observed Mrs Pearce. ‘No point in bringing them back—he paid for them, didn’t he?’ She added, ‘Men do such silly things when they’re in love.’

Eulalia agreed, although she didn’t think that he had behaved like a man in love. Very tight-lipped. He wouldn’t do for me, she reflected, preparing to gather up the wedding bouquets and convey them in a taxi.

Her destination was a palatial mansion in Belgravia, the home of the bride and, judging by the coming and going, the wedding was going to be a day to remember. She was admitted at the side door, bidden to wait, and then led through a bleak passage into a kitchen and out again through a baize door to the entrance hall—a gloomy place with a lot of marble about and a very large chandelier hanging from its lofty ceiling. Here the bouquets were taken from her by a vinegar-faced lady in a black dress and borne away up the wide staircase. ‘Wait here,’ she was told sourly, and since there were no seats she wandered around, studying the large paintings on the walls. They were as gloomy as the hall, depicting scenes of battle, dying ladies in white robes, and dead ducks lying in a most unlikely fashion beside bowls of fruit and bunches of flowers.

‘Absolutely awful,’ said Eulalia in her clear voice, and turned round to see if there was anything better on the other wall.

The man who had bought the roses was standing at the foot of the staircase watching her. He looked rather splendid, in a morning coat with a carnation in his buttonhole, and she felt an unexpected pang at the thought of him marrying his Ursula, who most certainly didn’t love him. He would be hard to love, of course, with that air of knowing best all the time…

She eyed him, her lovely head on one side. ‘You look magnificent,’ she told him, ‘and I dare say you’ll be very happy. She’s quite beautiful and I dare say you made it up. Well, you’d have to, wouldn’t you, since you’re getting married…?’

‘Your impertinent remarks are wide of the mark, Miss—er. I am not the bridegroom, nor indeed do I find it any of your business.’

He was as cross as two sticks, but she was glad he wasn’t getting married. ‘So sorry,’ she told him cheerfully. ‘I brought the bouquets, you know.’

‘I did not know, nor am I the. least interested. Why are you waiting here?’

‘I was told to. By someone in a black dress. She had a sharp nose.’

His thin mouth quivered just a little. ‘Then I will leave you to await her return. Good day to you, Miss—er.’

He crossed the hall and disappeared through a doorway and shut the door after him. At the same time the vinegar-faced lady came back, told her that the bouquets were satisfactory and that she might go. ‘Through the side door.’

‘I expect you’re tired, and overworked and cross,’ said Eulalia kindly, and nipped back down the bleak passage and out through the side door, to catch a bus and be borne back to the shop.

She was kept busy all day, for Mrs Pearce had built up quite a reputation for the perfection of her floral arrangements and there was a steady stream of customers, carried away by the sight of the flowers displayed so enticingly in the June sunshine. Besides, Eulalia was a very pretty girl and knew just how to please them, waiting patiently while they pondered their choice.

She didn’t go home for lunch; the bus cost money, for one thing, and for another, if the shop stayed open during the lunch-hour there was always a sprinkling of office workers, mostly husbands wanting flowers sent to their wives for an anniversary. Eulalia, a romantic girl, took great pains with them.

She worked on Saturdays, too, which meant that Peter, home from school, had to rely on Trottie’s company, but they spent their Sundays together, taking picnics to the parks in the summer and visiting museums in the cold weather. It wasn’t ideal but it couldn’t be helped. Mrs Pearce closed the shop on Mondays, which meant that Eulalia could stay at home and do the washing and ironing and then go to the local shops and stock up with groceries for the week. It worked well enough; since she and Peter spent their Sundays away from the flat, it gave Trottie a day to herself.

Going home that evening in a crowded bus, she planned what they would do at the weekend. They would take a bus, riding on the top, of course, and feed the ducks in St James’s Park. Banana sandwiches as well as Marmite, she decided, apples, and she would make some sausage rolls before she went to bed on Saturday. Orange squash, because he liked it, and some chocolate…He was a contented child and wise beyond his years, for he never asked her for something he knew she couldn’t afford.

It was a splendid morning as they left the flat on Sunday. It would be warm later, but now, in the comparative quiet of a Sunday morning, it was pleasantly cool. The bus was half-empty, so they had an upstairs front seat. At times, reflected Eulalia, parts of London were delightful. There would be no hardship in living in one of the elegant houses which lined the streets through which the bus lumbered. Peter, as though he had read her thoughts, said, ‘I’d like to live here. Do you suppose we could move one day?’

‘Just as soon as I make my fortune,’ she promised him, ‘but that may take a little time!’

‘You could marry a very rich man, Aunt Lally.’

‘Indeed, I could. Perhaps you will find him for me, dear.’

They were nearing the park, and made their way down to the platform, where they exchanged the time of day with the conductor and got off at the next stop.

There weren’t many people about, for it wasn’t ten o’clock yet. They wandered along, looking at the bright flowerbeds and presently feeding the ducks, before going to sit down in the sun.

There were plenty of people about now. They wandered on and presently sat down again to eat their lunch, and since Peter wanted to walk and there was plenty of time before they need go back again for tea, they had a last look at the lake and crossed the park to the Mall, crossed into Green Park and turned into Piccadilly, where Eulalia suggested that they might get a bus. However, Peter wanted to walk through the elegant streets with their big houses. ‘We can go as far as Park Lane,’ he pointed out, ‘and catch a bus there.’ Nothing loath, she agreed. She seldom had the chance to walk for any distance and, although the streets of London, however elegant, weren’t a patch on the country roads in the Cotswolds, it was pleasant enough to walk through them.

‘I dare say dukes and duchesses live here,’ said Peter. ‘Do you suppose they’re very grand inside?’

‘Certainly—lovely curtains and carpets and chandeliers…’ She enlarged upon this interesting subject as they walked, until in one of the quiet streets they came upon a magnificent dark grey Bentley and Peter urged her to stop while he took a good look at it. He circled it slowly, admiring it from all angles.

‘I shall have one, when I’m a man,’ he told her, and laid a small, rather grubby hand on its bonnet.

‘Peter, don’t touch. The owner would be very angry if he were to see you doing that.’

She let out a great gusty breath when a quiet voice said in her ear, ‘A wise caution, Miss—er. You should exercise more control over your son.’

They had been standing with their backs to the terrace of grand houses. Now she shot round to face someone who was beginning to crop up far too frequently. ‘It’s you,’ she said crossly. ‘I might have known.’

‘Now, why do you say that?’

‘No reason at all. I’m sorry if Peter has annoyed you; he had no intention of doing so.’ She moved away and took Peter’s hand. ‘Apologise to this gentleman, dear. I know you meant no harm but we mustn’t forget our manners.’

The boy and the man studied each other. ‘I’m sorry,’ said Peter finally, ‘but it’s a super car and I wanted to look at it.’

The man nodded. ‘Goodbye, Peter; goodbye Miss— er.’

He watched them go, smiling a little. A pity he couldn’t remember her surname, and they were hardly on such good terms that he could address her as Eulalia.

‘You look cross, Aunt Lally,’ said Peter, as they reached a bus-stop and joined the short queue.

‘Not with you, love; that man annoyed me.’

‘Was he rich?’ Peter wanted to know. ‘He must be if he lives in one of those houses and drives a Bentley.’

‘I dare say he is, but I really don’t know. Here’s our bus.’

Peter told Trottie all about it when they got home. ‘Aunt Lally was a bit cross with him,’ he explained.

At Trottie’s enquiring look Eulalia said, ‘It was the man who bought the roses,’ in a voice which didn’t invite questions.

* * *

A week went by. Eulalia, fashioning bouquets and taking orders for beribboned, Cellophaned flowers to be sent to wives and girlfriends and mothers, longed silently for her old home, with its large untidy gardens and the fields beyond. She hoped that the people who had bought it were taking proper care of it and had left the frogs in the pool at the bottom of the garden in peace. It would have been nice to show them to Peter.

She gave her head a shake. Moaning over what was past and couldn’t be helped would do no good. Rather, she must think of ways and means for Peter and Trottie to have a holiday once school was over. Somewhere not too far from London, and cheap. A farm, perhaps…

The fine weather had come to stay, at least for a time, and they planned a trip to the Serpentine on Sunday. Trottie was going to have her dinner with one of her elderly friends and Eulalia saw her off before she and Peter, carrying their picnic lunch, set out.

They had got off the bus and were waiting to cross the road when a bunch of youths on motorbikes raced past. They were in high spirits and the road was almost empty and they were going too fast. The last one of all went out of control, mounted the pavement and knocked Peter down, narrowly missing Eulalia, and tearing away.

Peter lay awkwardly, his head on the kerb, an arm bent awkwardly under him. She knelt down beside him, panic-stricken but fighting to keep sensible.

‘Peter—Peter, darling? Can you hear me?’ When he didn’t answer she felt for his pulse and was relieved to find his heart beating strongly. She took off her cardigan and slid it under his head but she didn’t move his arm in case it was broken. Then she stood up as a bus came lumbering along on the other side of the road. She waved and shouted to the driver and he stopped his bus, and the conductor came running across the street.

‘He was knocked down,’ said Eulalia in a voice which shook just a little. ‘I must get him to hospital…’

The conductor was a spruce little man and he looked helpful. ‘The bus passes Maude’s ‘ospital. We’ll have him aboard—quicker than waiting for an ambulance or a taxi.’

‘Bless you. He’s concussed and I think that arm’s broken.’

‘Leave it to me, miss. You go ahead of me; ’e can lie on yer lap. We’ll have ’im right as rain in no time.’

Between them they lifted Peter, and Eulalia lifted the arm gently and laid it across Peter’s small chest and then hurried to the bus. There was only a handful of passengers aboard and no one complained at the delay as she got in, received Peter on to her lap and held him close as the bus pulled away. The hospital was indeed only a very short drive and the driver took his bus into the forecourt and down the ramp to Casualty and then got down to help his conductor carry Peter in. Eulalia paused just long enough to apologise to the other passengers for the delay, and ran after them.

They were standing, the two of them, explaining to a nurse as Peter was laid on a trolley. “Ere she is,’ said the conductor. ‘She’ll give yer the details.’

He and the driver shook hands with her, looking bashful at her thanks. ‘Can’t keep the passengers waiting,’ said the driver. “Ope the nipper’ll be OK.’

‘Your names?’ asked Eulalia. ‘Quickly, for I must go to Peter.’

“E’s Dave Brown and I’m John ’Iggins, miss. Glad to ’ave ’elped.’

She kissed them on the cheek in turn and hurried after the trolley.

Peter had his eyes open now and she took his hand in hers. ‘Peter? It’s all right, love. You fell down, you’re in hospital and a doctor will come and see if you’re hurt.’

‘If you’ll give the details to the receptionist,’ said the nurse, ‘we’ll get him comfy and get someone to look at him. An accident, was it?’

Eulalia told her briefly and took herself off to the reception desk, and by the time she got back Peter was on an examination couch. His clothes had been taken off, the sleeve of his injured arm cut to allow the small arm to be exposed. He was trying not to cry and she went and held his good hand, wanting to weep herself.

The young doctor who came in said, ‘Hello,’ in a cheerful voice, then, ‘So what’s happened to this young man?’

He was gently examining Peter’s head as he spoke. He peered into his eyes, then turned his attention to the arm. ‘Can you squeeze my finger, old chap?’ he wanted to know, and at Peter’s whimper of pain, said, ‘I think an X-ray first of all, don’t you? So we can see the damage.’

He smiled at Eulalia. ‘We’ll take care of him. If you’ll wait here?’

She went and sat down on a bench, oblivious of her torn dress and dishevelled person. There were few people around: two or three at the other end of Casualty, talking quietly, and near them were curtains drawn round one of the cubicles. The curtains parted presently and a big woman with an air of authority came out, followed by a man in a long white coat. She would have known him anywhere because of his great size, and she watched him go and speak to the group near by with a feeling that she was never going to be rid of him. Hopefully, he’d go away without seeing her…

But he had. He shook hands with the two women, and with the man with them, and trod without haste towards her.

He looked different, somehow, and he was different. He was someone in authority, ready to help and capable of doing just that. She stood up to meet him, her skirt in tatters around the hem, dust from the street masking its colour. ‘It’s Peter, he was knocked down by a motorbike—we were on the pavement. He hit his head and I think his arm is broken. He’s been taken to X-Ray. I was told to wait here.’

She was pale with worry and her voice shook and so did her hands, so she put them behind her back in case he should see that and think her a silly woman lacking self-control.

‘Where did it happen?’

She told him. ‘And those two men on the bus, they were so quick and kind. I don’t know what I would have done without them.’

‘I suspect that you would have managed. Sit down again. I’ll go to X-Ray and see how things are.’

She put a hand on his sleeve. ‘Do you work here? I mean, you’re a doctor in Casualty?’

‘Not in Casualty, but I work here upon occasion. I am a surgeon.’ He added, ‘Orthopaedics.’

‘Bones,’ said Eulalia. ‘You’ll help Peter?’

‘It seems that since I’m here I might as well.’

She watched him walk away. He had spoilt everything with that last remark. She had been beginning to like him a little but she had been mistaken; he was a bad-tempered man and rude with it. All the same, she hoped he would do something for Peter. Quite unexpectedly, two tears escaped and ran down her pale cheeks. She brushed them aside impatiently, and just in time as he came back.

‘Mild concussion, and he has a fractured arm just above the wrist. We will give him a local anaesthetic, align the bones and put on a plaster. We’ll keep him overnight for observation…’ And at her questioning look he added, ‘No, no, nothing to worry about. Routine only. You can fetch him in the morning, but telephone first. Keep him in bed for a couple of days and no school for a week.’

‘He’s all right?’

He said impatiently, ‘Have I not said so? Come and see him before we put the plaster on.’

He turned on his heel and walked away, and she followed him through a door and into a small room where Peter lay on a table. He grinned when he saw her. ‘He said I was brave,’ he told her. ‘I’m going to stay here tonight. You will fetch me, won’t you?’

‘Of course, dear.’ She glanced around. There was no sign of any doctor, only a male nurse and a student nurse busy with bowls of water and plaster bandages.

‘Like to stay?’ asked the nurse, and gave her a friendly look.

‘May I?’

‘No problem.’ He turned away and lifted Peter’s good arm out of the blanket. ‘Here’s Mr van Linssen. He’ll have you as good as new in no time at all.’

So that was his name. She watched as he slid a needle into Peter’s broken arm. He did it unhurriedly and very gently, talking all the time to the boy. ‘You’re a lot braver than many of the grown-ups,’ he told him. ‘In a minute or two we’re going to straighten your arm—you won’t have any pain, but you’ll feel us pulling a little. Keep still, won’t you?’

Peter nodded. His lip quivered a little but he wasn’t going to cry. It was Eulalia who felt like crying. She was sure that Peter couldn’t feel any pain but she closed her eyes as Mr van Linssen began to pull steadily while the nurse held the arm firmly.

‘You can look now,’ he said in a hatefully bland voice, so she did. He was holding the arm while the nurse began to slide on a stockinette sleeve and then start to apply the plaster. It didn’t take long and Peter hadn’t made a sound.

Mr van Linssen was smoothing the plaster tidily when Sister put her head round the curtains. ‘Why, Mr van Linssen, I thought you had left ages ago. You’ll be late for that luncheon party.’ Her eyes fell on Peter. ‘Had a tumble?’

‘Knocked down by a motorbike. I’d like him in for the night, Sister. Get a bed, will you? And we’ll make him comfortable. He’s been a model patient.’

She went away and the nurse started to clear up. Mr van Linssen took off his white coat and the student nurse took it from him gingerly. Rather as though he might bite, thought Eulalia. She got up. ‘‘Thank you very much for your help—’ she began.

She was cut short. ‘No need, all in the day’s work, Miss—er?’

He raised his eyebrows, standing there looking at her.

‘Warburton,’ she snapped.

He nodded. ‘Your son’s a nice little chap,’ he said, and walked away.

She turned to the nurse. ‘I’m Peter’s cousin,’ she told him. ‘I did tell the receptionist—he’s an orphan.’

‘Makes no odds,’ said the nurse, and smiled at her; she was very pretty and she had cheered up his day a bit. ‘You were in luck. Mr van Linssen wasn’t even on duty—came in to see the relations of a patient who died—had a hip op here and got knocked down late last night. He may be a consultant and a bit high and mighty but I know who I’d like to deal with my bones if I broke them.’

Sister came back then and Peter was borne off to the children’s ward, sleepy now but rather proud of his plastered arm. Eulalia saw him into his bed and was told by the ward sister that there was no need to come back with pyjamas and toothbrush. ‘He’s only here for the night,’ she said in a comfortable voice. ‘Mind you phone first and we’ll have him ready for you.’

Eulalia thanked her, kissed Peter and went out of the Casualty entrance. At the top of the ramp there was a dark grey Bentley and Mr van Linssen was sitting in it. He opened the door as she reached the car.

‘Get in. I’ll drive you home.’

‘No, thank you. There’s a bus—’

‘Get in, Miss Warburton, and don’t pretend that you aren’t upset. All mothers are when their small children get hurt. Where do you live?’

She got in without another word after she had told him, and they drove in silence until he stopped before the flat. As she got out she said, ‘Thank you, you’re very kind. And I’m not Peter’s mother, only his cousin.’