Читать книгу The End of the Rainbow - Betty Neels, Бетти Нилс - Страница 7

A SNEERING MARCH WIND WAS blowing down Primrose Hill Road, driving everyone and everything before it, but there was one battling figure struggling into its teeth—a young woman, hurrying along at a great rate, her head bent, her hair, whipped out of her head-scarf, blowing around her face. Presently she turned down a side road and pausing only to tuck her hair away out of her eyes, hurried on, faster now in its comparative shelter. It was a pleasant enough street, lined with tall, late-Victorian houses, nicely maintained still, each with its narrow railed-off area steps leading to a basement, and each, too, with its heavy front door, bearing an impressive brass knocker. Halfway along these superior dwellings the girl stopped, darted up the steps, put down the basket which she was carrying, opened the door with some difficulty, whisked up the basket and went inside.

The hall she entered was chilly and rather dim, with a polished linoleum floor and a table, flanked by two chairs, against one wall. There was a handsome vase on the table, empty, and a scrupulously clean ashtray. The stairs were covered with lino too, and although everything was spotlessly clean and free from dust, it held neither warmth nor welcome. The girl paused only long enough to close the door behind her before crossing the hall and making her way down the stairs beyond a small archway at the back. She had reached the bottom and had her hand on a door in the narrow dark passage beyond when she was halted by a voice. It called sharply from the floor above: ‘Olympia, come here at once!’

The girl put her basket down and went upstairs again, opened one of the massive mahogany doors in the hall, shut it quietly behind her, and waited near it, looking across the carpeted floor to where her aunt sat at her desk. Miss Maria Randle was a large woman, approaching middle-age but still handsome despite her severe expression. She looked up briefly now. ‘You have been gone a long time,’ she observed coldly.

‘There was a good deal of shopping…’

‘Nonsense—when I was a girl of your age, I thought nothing of twice the amount I ask you to do.’ She sighed, ‘But there, you are hardly capable of a normal girl’s work; if I had known when I adopted you, gave you a good home and educated you at such expense, that you would repay me in such an ungrateful fashion, I would have thought twice about it.’

Olympia had heard it all before; she sighed soundlessly, and her face took on the wooden expression which concealed her hurt feelings and which her aunt referred to as mulish. It was a pleasant face, although it had no startling good looks; grey eyes, nicely fringed, a short straight nose, a wide, softly curved mouth and a determined chin didn’t quite add up to prettiness. Her hair was a warm brown, hanging round her shoulders rather untidily; it caught Miss Randle’s annoyed eye and enabled her to voice another grievance. ‘And your hair!’ she declared severely. ‘Surely you can do something about it? You’re a disgrace—if any of the doctors were to see you like this I’m sure I don’t know what they would think.’

Olympia said nothing at all; she was perfectly well aware that her aunt knew as well as she did that the doctors only saw her when she was in uniform, her hair smoothed back into a neat bun under a plain cap. Maybe her aunt remembered this too, for she didn’t pursue the matter further, but: ‘You are on duty in ten minutes—leave the shopping in the kitchen, and see that you’re not late. You must try and remember that my staff are expected to be punctual, and that includes you, Olympia.’ She frowned heavily. ‘Such a ridiculous name,’ she added crossly.

Again Olympia said nothing; she rather liked her name, although she was aware that her appearance hardly justified it. She should, she had always felt, have been a voluptuous blonde, and strikingly beautiful, instead of which she was a little on the short side and thin with it, her features were pleasantly ordinary and her hair, soft and long though it was, and tending to curl nicely at the ends when it was given the chance, was usually too severely dressed. But her parents were not to have known that when she was born—probably she had been a very pretty baby, and since they had both died in a motor accident before she could toddle, they had never known how wrong they were.

She went quietly from the room, took the shopping to the kitchen where she handed it over to Mrs Blair, the hard-worked daily cook, and returned to her room to change into uniform.

The room was like the hall, bare and clean and chilly. She shivered a little as she took off her things, donned the blue dress and white apron, fastened the blue petersham belt round her little waist, and finally smoothed her hair into its demure bun under her cap. She had a couple of minutes to spare still before she needed to go on duty, and the thought crossed her mind that a cup of coffee would be nice; but Mrs Blair was already cross; by the time she could coax her into giving her a cup it would be too late. She tied the laces of the sensible black shoes her aunt insisted upon and went back upstairs.

The nursing home catered for twenty patients, and it was always full; a number of the rooms held three beds, in some cases two, and on the first floor there were three single-bedded rooms, commanding high fees for that very reason, and usually inhabited by wealthy patients who demanded a great deal of attention, and because they could pay, usually got it, however trivial.

Olympia passed these three doors now and entered a small cupboard of a room where a middle-aged woman in nurse’s uniform was sitting. She looked up as Olympia went in and smiled. ‘I’ve just made a pot of tea,’ she greeted her. ‘I bet you had to spend your off duty shopping,’ and at Olympia’s nod: ‘I thought as much—and now you’re on duty until eight o’clock this evening.’ She produced two mugs. ‘It’s really too bad; if I didn’t need the money so badly and live almost on the doorstep, I’d be tempted to try my luck somewhere else in protest, but much good that would do; you’d get all my work to do as well as your own.’

She spooned sugar into their teas and they sat down side by side at the desk.

‘How’s Harold?’ asked Olympia. Harold was Mrs Cooper’s teenage son, suffering from muscular dystrophy, and the reason why she went out to work—he was the reason why she stayed at the nursing home too, for it was only a few yards from her flat, and because nurses were hard to get, Miss Randle had reluctantly allowed her to work during the hours which suited her.

‘He had a bad night,’ said his mother, getting to her feet. ‘There’s nothing to report; they’re all much as usual. Doctor Craddock came and changed Mrs Bright’s medicine… I’ll be in at two tomorrow.’ She went to the door. ‘Mrs Drew’s making beds upstairs, and Miss Snow is getting Mr Kemp up. So long, dear.’

Left to herself, Olympia read the report, tidied away the tea things and started on her visits to the patients. They were all elderly geriatric cases; her aunt would take nothing else, since more acute nursing would mean more staff and trained nurses at that. As it was, she got by very well with Olympia and Mrs Cooper, and Mrs Drew and Miss Snow, who had had no training at all but looked like nurses in their uniforms. During the night she managed with two more nursing aides, good and competent and hard-working, and if anything needed the skill of a trained nurse, why, there was always Olympia to get up and see to things.

The three patients with rooms to themselves were nicely settled for the time being; she climbed the stairs to the floor above, where she gave out the medicines, did a bed bath, made a couple of beds, and then considerably later, climbed the last narrow flight. Here the rooms contained more beds; one held four old ladies, the other three elderly men, and although they were adequately lighted and warm enough, they were entirely bare of pictures or ornaments. The patients here had little money; just enough, with the help of relations who were horrified at the idea of sending their old folk into hospital, for the fees to be paid, leaving little over for spending. Olympia longed to tell them how much better off they would be in a geriatric unit in any of the big hospitals in London; they would have company there, and the telly, as well as the library ladies coming round twice a week and more old ladies and gentlemen to talk to. She went from one to other of them now, stopping to chat, admire knitting, discuss the weather or look at some picture in a paper. She always stopped longer than she should on the top floor, because the poor old things were mostly incapable of getting down the stairs for themselves, and Aunt Maria, although she paid them a daily visit, rarely stopped for more than a few moments. Olympia, tidying beds and listening with half an ear to their occupants, reflected for the hundredth time on the improvements she would bring about if she could take Aunt Maria’s place and run the home herself. Not that she liked geriatric nursing; she had loved her three years’ training at a large London hospital and she had done well there. She had wanted, above all things, to specialize in surgery, but she had given her word to her aunt before she began her training, and she hadn’t broken it, although sorely tempted to do so.

She knew now that Aunt Maria had been quite unscrupulous and totally unfair towards her. True, she had educated her well, bought her sensible, hard-wearing clothes which had been agony to wear in the company of her better dressed friends, and instilled into her, over the years, the fact that she must never cease to be grateful to an aunt who had taken her as a toddler and devoted her life to her upbringing. And when, at the age of fifteen or thereabouts, Olympia had expressed a wish to take up nursing, her aunt had agreed readily, at the same time pointing out that Olympia, as a grateful niece, could do no less than hand over the bulk of her salary, when the time came, to an aunt who had spent a great deal of money over the years. Moreover, she had extracted a promise that upon the completion of her training, Olympia should return to the nursing home and work for her aunt at a very modest wage indeed, because, it was made clear to her, she would be living free, and what girl in these days was lucky enough to have a good home where she could live for nothing?

Olympia, at that age, hadn’t known much about that; she promised, only asking: ‘And may I never go back to hospital? I think I should like to be a surgical nurse, and perhaps in a year or two, when I’ve trained, I could get a Sister’s post.’

Aunt Maria had laughed. ‘Why should you wish to leave?’ she wanted to know. ‘You have a duty to me, you know.’

‘Supposing I should want to get married?’ Olympia, almost sixteen, had been a romantic.

Her aunt had laughed again, a little unkindly, and had taken her time in replying. ‘My dear,’ she had said at length, ‘I cannot imagine any man wanting to marry you—you aren’t the marrying type.’ She had picked up her pen to signify the end of the interview. ‘But if such an unlikely event should happen, then naturally you may leave.’

And that had been eight years ago now; Olympia had finished school and until she had been old enough to start her training, had helped her aunt in the nursing home, running errands, cooking when Mrs Blair had a day off, making beds and sorting linen. She had been eighteen when she had left the house near Primrose Hill and gone to live in hospital, and the next three years of her life had been the happiest she had known. She had loved the work and the busy routine; she had made many friends too and had done well; so well that she had been offered the Sister’s post she had so much longed for. But Aunt Maria had nipped that in the bud; reminding her of her promise, so that she had gone back to work in the chilly nursing home and was still there, two years later. And because she was paid very little and seldom went out, she met no one at all; the doctors who visited the patients were mostly elderly GPs and even the visitors were old, or at least, middle-aged. At first, in hospital, she had cherished dreams of meeting some young man who would wish to marry her and thus solve the future for her, but beyond one or two dates which had never got beyond the first meeting, nothing had happened. Perhaps, as her aunt had pointed out, she wasn’t a girl men would want to marry.

She went slowly downstairs presently, to supervise the patients’ dinners, then went back upstairs to feed old Mrs Blake, who could no longer feed herself. The old people were out of their beds by now, sitting round the table; they enjoyed their meals, they broke the monotony of their days. They lingered over their pudding, talking quite animatedly, and after a little while Olympia left Miss Snow to attend to their little wants and get them on to their beds for their afternoon nap, then went downstairs to the dining-room where her aunt was waiting. They lunched quickly with the minimum of conversation, and that pertaining to the running of the home. ‘You must go down to Selfridges tomorrow afternoon,’ said Miss Randle as she portioned out the steamed pudding. ‘I want you to buy some sheets.’

‘It’s my half-day off,’ Olympia reminded her.

‘I’m aware of that, but what difference should that make? I imagine you will enjoy going to Oxford Street—you have no plans.’

‘Yes, I had, Aunt Maria. I’m going to the National Gallery—there’s an exhibition of paintings I want to see, and I’ve arranged to meet Sally Grey for tea afterwards.’ Sally had been one of her friends at hospital.

Her aunt helped herself to more steamed pudding. ‘You can telephone her and tell her that you will meet her on another day,’ she said positively. ‘As for the National Gallery, there is always some exhibition or other being held there; you can see something else later on.’

Olympia forbore from commenting upon this remark, for she knew that it would be useless; instead she asked reasonably: ‘Perhaps you could go to Selfridges? Mrs Cooper will be on duty…’

Her aunt eyed her coldly. ‘When I want your advice as to what I should and should not do, Olympia, I will ask for it. You will be good enough to go to Selfridges. And by the way, I have Mr Gibson coming to supper and we shall have a great deal to discuss about the next church bazaar, so be sure that you are back here in good time—not later than six—that will leave me free to entertain him.’

Olympia said: ‘Yes, Aunt,’ in a wooden voice, excused herself, and went upstairs to her patients. It would be very satisfying to throw something at her aunt, she thought fiercely as she busied herself at the medicine cupboard; it would be wonderful, too, to pack her bags and leave the home for ever and never see Aunt Maria again, only if she did that she would break her promise. Besides, the old people she looked after might miss her; they would certainly suffer from the shortage of staff—Aunt Maria would have difficulty in getting anyone to take her place. Two room buzzers sounded together, both from the first floor, Olympia sighed, hastily finished what she was doing, and went to answer them.

Mrs Cooper was nothing if not punctual on the following day. Olympia handed over the keys, gave a brief report and rushed away to change. She hadn’t expected to get away so early, with luck she would be able to spend most of the afternoon as she had planned after all. She put on the tweed suit she had worn now for a couple of years—a dull, brownish garment of a material which refused to wear out—she would be stuck with it for years, she thought resentfully, tying her head-scarf under her chin and snatching up the leather gloves she had saved so long to buy. Aunt Maria had been disgusted with her for her extravagance in purchasing them; gloves, she had argued, did not need to be of leather, there were several good imitations these days; neither did they have to be purchased at Harrods. British Home Stores, she had continued, warming to her theme, had an enormous variety at a very reasonable price, and it was both unkind and thoughtless of Olympia to waste her aunt’s money in such a fashion. That Olympia had worked hard and long for a salary no other girl would have dreamed of accepting seemed to have escaped her mind; when Olympia had reminded her of it, it was to bring down a storm of recrimination on her head. She remembered it now as she let herself out of the door and heaved a sigh of relief at being free once more, even if only for a few hours. She caught the bus going down Primrose Hill, busily planning the hours before her.

Selfridges was crowded. She found her way to the linen department, and uncaring of her aunt’s minute instructions about the careful examination of the sheets before she ordered them, chose the first pair she was shown, had them entered on Miss Randle’s account, and turned her attention to more interesting merchandise. Coloured sheets, she mused, flowered ones, stripes even, would cheer up the clinical austerity of the rooms at the nursing home at very little extra expense. She had suggested it once and her aunt had been horrified, deploring the regrettably extravagant streak in her niece’s character. Olympia wandered along, through the dress department and the coats, feasting her eyes upon the clothes she would like to wear, given the chance, until a glance at the clock caused her to leave the store. It was a pity she had telephoned Sally and cancelled their tea together; she could have fitted it in nicely after all, but she still had several hours to herself. She got on a bus once more, got off at the National Gallery and ran up the steps. On the last step of all she tripped and fell on her face.

The hands which picked her up were large and firm and gentle, they set her on her feet with no fuss, dusted her down, tweaked her head-scarf straight and then dropped lightly on to her shoulders.

Olympia rubbed a sore knee and looked up at her rescuer; a large man, very tall and not so very young; forty, she judged, with pale-coloured hair heavily sprinkled with grey and a handsome face which rather took her breath. Such men seldom came her way, and now, she thought with regret and annoyance, she had to be fool enough to fall down so absurdly—her suit would be a mess too—she glanced down at it and he spoke. He had a nice voice too, slow and deep and faintly accented. ‘Not much harm done, I think—sore knees perhaps, and a bruise or two…’

She answered him shyly. ‘I was really more bothered about my clothes.’

His blue eyes studied her without haste. ‘Nothing a clothes brush can’t tackle.’ He dropped his hands from her shoulders and went on with casual friendliness. ‘Were you going to the exhibition? If so, I daresay an attendant could find a brush for you.’

She nodded once more. ‘But I think I’d better go home.’

He gave her another long, considered look. ‘Surely no need for that? I suggest that you go and tidy yourself, and be sure and wash your grazes with soap and water. I’ll wait and we’ll walk round together.’

His cool command of the situation should have nettled her, but it didn’t. ‘But…’ began Olympia.

He interrupted her crisply. ‘We will introduce ourselves,’ his voice became mild, ‘and then all will be most proper, will it not? I’m Waldo van der Graaf,’ he held out a large hand and she put hers into it and he wrung it gently.

‘Mine’s Randle—O-Olympia.’

He showed no signs of amusement but queried: ‘You are not married?’

It was more of a statement than a question, and she winced a little that he should have taken it for granted, though heaven knew by the look of her he had no reason to suppose otherwise. She said, ‘No,’ rather defiantly.

They went inside then and she found herself, after her companion had murmured briefly to one of the attendants, being led away to a cloakroom, where mindful of the large man’s words, she washed the dirt from her knees and then stood patiently while the attendant got to work on the stains. She looked a little better then, but still woefully inadequate to be a companion to such a handsome and distinguished-looking man. She went back into the entrance hall, half expecting him to be gone, but he was still standing where she had left him, studying a catalogue in an unconcerned way, as though he had all the time in the world before him. He looked up as she reached him and smiled, and then without speaking took her arm and ushered her into the first room.

They didn’t hurry, and she was so absorbed that she didn’t notice the time; it was delightful to be with someone who actually listened to her, and even shared her tastes, and when he didn’t, refrained from ramming his own down her throat. They were still lingering in the last room when she happened to see a clock.

‘I must go,’ she declared, appalled. ‘It’s almost half past four, the bus queues will be packed if I don’t hurry—I’ll never get back in time.’

He gave her a quick side-glance. ‘You have to return at a certain time?’

She told him, guardedly, about Aunt Maria and Mr Gibson coming to supper. ‘So you see, I must…’ she smiled at him, feeling as though he were an old friend. ‘It’s been a lovely afternoon, thank you.’

She held out a hand, but instead of shaking it he took it between his own. ‘You have to be back by six o’clock? Time enough for a cup of tea together, and it just so happens that I have to go to—er— Hampstead this evening. I should be delighted to offer you a lift in my taxi.’

She eyed him uncertainly. ‘But won’t it be…? That is, you won’t mind? And you’ll be sure and get me there by six?’

He smiled down at her, kind and reassuring and yet casual. ‘Cross my heart—is that not what you say in English?’

They had walked slowly out of the entrance and down the steps as they were talking. ‘You’re not English?’ Olympia wanted to know.

‘Dutch, but I come often to England—I have English relations.’ He lifted a hand at a passing taxi and settled her into it, then got in beside her. She heard him say: ‘Fortnum and Mason, please,’ with a sudden childish excitement; she had never been there in her life, not inside at any rate. She said now a little anxiously: ‘I’m not dressed for a super place like that,’ and was instantly and ridiculously reassured by his quiet: ‘You are very nicely dressed, Miss Randle.’

All the same, she was a little apprehensive as they seated themselves in the elegant tea-room; the place seemed to her excited mind to be full of fur coats and what the fashion magazines always referred to as little dresses, which cost the earth, she had no doubt. She took off her headscarf and smoothed her neat head with a nervous hand and met his eyes, twinkling nicely, across the table. ‘Tea?’ he inquired. ‘Earl Grey, I think—and buttered toast and little cakes.’ His firm mouth turned its corners up briefly. ‘I enjoy your English tea.’

She enjoyed it too; her companion had the gift of making her feel at ease, even amongst the Givenchy scarves and crocodile handbags. She found herself telling him about Aunt Maria and the nursing home and then stopped rather suddenly because she was being disloyal to her aunt and he was, after all, a stranger. He didn’t appear to notice her discomfiture, however, but talked on, filling awkward pauses with an easy blandness, so that by the time she got up to go she was a little hazy as to what she had actually said.

He talked nothings in the taxi too, so that by the time they arrived outside the nursing home she had quite forgotten, for the time being at least, a good deal of what they had talked about during tea.

He got out with her and walked to the door and when she had bidden him good-bye and opened it, he gave the cold, austere hall the same shrewd look as he had given her, but he made no remark, merely said that he had enjoyed his afternoon without evincing any wish to see her again, as indeed, she had expected. She was not, she reminded herself sadly, the kind of girl men wanted to take out a second time; she had no sparkle, no looks above the ordinary, and living for years with Aunt Maria, who liked to do all the talking, had hardly improved her conversation. She wished him good-bye in a quiet little voice, thanked him again, and went into the house.

If she was more subdued than ever that evening, her aunt was far too absorbed in her conversation with Mr Gibson to notice; certainly she had no time to question her niece as to how she had spent her afternoon, something for which Olympia was thankful. She got the supper and cleared it away again, then went to her room with the perfectly legitimate excuse that she was on duty early the next morning. But she didn’t go to bed immediately; she sat and thought about Mr van der Graaf; she thought about their tea together and then, a little uneasily, of the things she had told him; she was still hazy as to exactly what she had said, but as she would never see him again, she consoled herself with the fact that it wouldn’t really matter, he would have forgotten her already; he had whisked in and out of her life, large and elegant and very sure of himself. Olympia sighed, frowned at her reflection in the old-fashioned dressing-table mirror, and went to bed.