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Cobweb Morning
Betty Neels
Mills & Boon presents the complete Betty Neels collection. Timeless tales of heart-warming romance by one of the world’s best-loved romance authors.What was the truth about Penny? Sister Alexandra Dobbs met the distinguished Dutch doctor, Taro van Dresselhuys, when he asked her to help with Penny, a teenager with amnesia. It didn’t take Alexandra long to fall in love with Taro – but Penny did too.It had to be a teenage crush, but Taro did little to discourage the girl and why did he always side with Penny against Alexandra? It was then that Alexandra began to have suspicions about Penny…
“A lovely morning,” observed the doctor.
“Heavenly—the mist makes everything look like fairyland….”
“A cobweb morning—that’s what it’s called in these parts—did you not know that?”
She smiled up at him. “No, I didn’t. It’s a beautiful description.”
He said seriously, “Yes, and you are a beautiful girl, Alexandra.” He bent his head to kiss her, taking his time about it. Then, “I have to go now,” he told her abruptly, and went.
Alexandra had up till now thought of her flagrant worship of him as a child’s gratitude for what he had done for her. Now she wasn’t so sure. She was very young, of course, but what had age to do with loving someone?
About the Author
Romance readers around the world were sad to note the passing of BETTY NEELS in June 2001. Her career spanned thirty years, and she continued to write into her ninetieth year. To her millions of fans, Betty epitomized the romance writer, and yet she began writing almost by accident. She had retired from nursing, but her inquiring mind still sought stimulation. Her new career was born when she heard a lady in her local library bemoaning the lack of good romance novels. Betty’s first book, Sister Peters in Amsterdam, was published in 1969, and she eventually completed 134 books. Her novels offer a reassuring warmth that was very much a part of her own personality. She was a wonderful writer, and she will be greatly missed. Her spirit and genuine talent will live on in all her stories.
Cobweb Morning
Betty Neels
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER ONE
THE hospital dining-room was almost empty save for the maid on duty, wiping down tables in a belligerent manner and in an ever-increasing circle around the one occupied table, whose three occupants watched her warily between their mouthfuls of the wholesome if unimaginative fish pie which had been all that was left on the day’s menu. She returned their looks with a cross one of her own and spoke sourly.
‘There ain’t no afters, it’ll ’ave ter be cheese and biscuits.’
The eldest of the three ladies, a thin person in her forties with an ill-tempered face and wearing a ward Sister’s uniform, merely frowned, while the small, pretty creature sitting opposite her, also in Sister’s uniform but looking somehow unaccustomed to it, looked apologetically at the speaker and murmured that it didn’t matter. It was left to the third member of the party to turn a pair of fine eyes in the maid’s direction and request her in a crisp voice to bring the cheese and biscuits. ‘And I have no doubt,’ she went on in her pleasant voice, ‘that you can find us a pot of tea, can’t you, Bertha?’
She smiled with such charm that the grumpy Bertha smiled back, flung down her cloth, and although muttering, went away to fetch what had been requested of her, while the Sister who had spoken sat back in her chair and began a desultory conversation with her two companions. She was a very pretty young woman, with a creamy skin and abundant hair, as dark as her eyes, and with a delightful nose which tilted ever so slightly at its tip above a generously curved mouth and a small determined chin. She was a tall, well-built girl, whose figure showed off to perfection the uniform she was wearing—that of a hospital Sister, too, but rather different from the others, and decidedly better fitting, moreover, the neat coil of hair above her neck was crowned with the frilled and goffered cap of one of the famous London hospitals, its strings tied in a bow under her chin; a piece of old-fashioned nonsense which vastly became her.
The cheese and biscuits and a large pot of tea arrived, were consumed hurriedly, and the three ladies prepared to leave. It was already two o’clock as they rose from the table and the November afternoon had dwindled into a wet, grey prospect which promised an even worse evening. Alexandra Dobbs twitched her bows into a more comfortable position with a well-kept hand and looked out of the window as they crossed the large, comfortless room. There was nothing to see outside; a hotchpotch of walls and annexes and a few trees beyond; she would have liked to have been back at her own hospital, with the traffic thundering past in a subdued roar and the prospect of a pleasant evening in the Sisters’ sitting-room when she went off duty, or what was more likely, a meal out with one of the Medical Registrars, Anthony Ferris—a young man who, at thirty, was climbing up his particular ladder successfully enough and had lately given her to believe that he would like her to climb with him. Indeed, she had wondered once or twice in the last few days if she would decide to marry him; she had, since the age of seventeen—ten years ago—been the recipient of a number of proposals of marriage, and while refusing them politely, had taken none of them seriously, but Anthony was different; he was ambitious, he wanted a consulting practice, a good income and a suitable wife. The only reason that she hadn’t encouraged him so far was because she had a niggling feeling that she wasn’t suitable. Besides, when she really thought seriously about it, she wasn’t sure that she wanted to marry him; she had told herself that it was silly to indulge in childish fancies, Anthony and she were well suited—everyone who knew them told her that—and yet she had the oddest feeling that somewhere in the world there was a man waiting for her—a man about whom she would have no doubts at all.
This nebulous figure was at the back of her mind now, as she walked back with her companions to the new Intensive Care Unit, recently opened at the hospital—a small unit of two beds, for the hospital was small, too; serving a provincial town and its surrounding rural west country area. It was this unit which was the reason for her being there; she had been Sister-in-Charge of the large, always busy unit at St Job’s for several years now, and had been seconded to the hospital in order to instruct its staff: Sister Baxter, who had no wish to be trained, anyway, not because she didn’t want to run the new unit, but because she considered that no one could instruct her about anything; she knew it already, and Sister Pim, very young and inexperienced and quite frankly terrified of Sister Baxter. A fine setup, Alexandra considered as she went over the apparatus just once more. It was the third day of her visit and she was due back in the morning; it was a pity, without wishing anyone any harm, that a patient needing intensive care couldn’t be admitted, so that she could judge for herself if Sister Baxter knew what she was about. She very much doubted it, and Sister Pim, although a charming girl, had had no experience at all; she had barely qualified when she had been offered the post. On her own she might do very well, but with Sister Baxter bullying her she would turn into a yes-woman, doing what she was told whether it was right or not.
A pity, mused Alexandra, who had never been a yes-woman in her life, partly because she had an elder brother and two younger ones, all of whom had made it their business to see that she could stand up for herself. Her mother, watching her lovely little daughter climbing trees, swimming like a fish and giving as good as she got when it came to holding her own against her brothers, had at times worried that she might grow up a tomboy, but Alexandra hadn’t; she had become a charming girl with nice manners, a willingness to help at church bazaars and other rural events, a pleasant way with children, and an endless patience with the elderly and their foibles. The perfect wife, Mrs Dobbs had told herself, well satisfied, and had spent the next eight or nine years wondering why Alexandra didn’t get married. Instead the dear girl had carved a career for herself in the nursing profession and had shown no signs of wanting to marry at all, although just lately Mrs Dobbs had been more hopeful; Alexandra had mentioned, more and more frequently, Anthony Ferris. Mrs Dobbs, an incurable romantic, allowed herself to plan a wedding outfit, but took great care to keep her hopes to herself.
The short afternoon slid into dusk and then dark. Sister Baxter went to her tea, taking the meek little Lucy Pim with her, and Alexandra, due off duty when they returned, set about making a final check before she left. She still had to see the Senior Nursing Officer, but that wouldn’t take long—she would pack that evening, she told herself contentedly, and catch an early morning train back to London.
The other two had returned, and she was on the point of leaving them when there was the sound of a car, driven hard and braking to a halt outside the hospital entrance. It was followed, after the shortest possible interval, by the sound of footsteps coming down the corridor towards them, and an imperative voice issuing instructions. Alexandra, hearing it, felt a pang of sympathy for the elderly porter on duty—he liked to do things in his own time and it was obvious that just for once, he wasn’t being given that chance.
The owner of the voice appeared seconds later, an immensely tall man and powerfully built, making light of the burden he was carrying—an unconscious girl. He paused momentarily as he entered and asked without preamble: ‘Who’s in charge here?’
Sister Baxter, bristling with authority, answered him. ‘I am, but this isn’t the Casualty Department; there isn’t one at this hospital, you must go to…’
She wasn’t given the chance to finish; the man had laid the girl down gently on a couch and was bending over her. ‘I know, I know,’ he said impatiently, ‘but this girl’s been in a car crash and she needs to go on to a ventilator at once. I’ve no intention of travelling another five or six miles to have the Casualty Officer tell me that she will have to be brought back here for treatment. Kindly summon the officer on duty and give me a hand.’ He added as an afterthought: ‘I’m a doctor.’
He lifted his head and looked at Sister Baxter with scarcely concealed impatience, his blue eyes passing from her to Sister Pim and thence to Alexandra. He was a handsome man, in his thirties, with a straight nose and a mobile mouth. His hair, now grizzled, must have been very fair when he was younger. Alexandra noted these things as she stepped forward; it wasn’t her department and she wasn’t in charge, but Sister Baxter was being tiresome and little Lucy Pim was, for the moment, unable to cope. She said calmly: ‘Would you prefer the Cape? The Bird’s is here if it’s only for a short time—is she very bad?’ She turned her head and spoke to Lucy, ignoring Sister Baxter’s outraged face. ‘Will you get Mr Collins? He’s on duty, I believe.’
She was competent at her work; she and the strange doctor had the Cape ventilator going by the time Mr Collins and Sister Pim arrived, and within a few minutes, after they had prepared the girl for examination, the two men set to work. Alexandra had been surprised that Mr Collins had raised no objection to the strange doctor’s obvious assumption that he should take charge of the case, it was really quite unethical, but he had murmured something with a good deal of respect when the stranger had introduced himself, so briefly and softly that she, to her annoyance, had been unable to hear a word of it. But there was no time to speculate about anyone else but the patient for the moment, for she was in a bad way.
She was young—eighteen or nineteen, perhaps, and very pretty, although the prettiness was marred now by her ashen face and blood-matted hair. A fractured base of skull, probably, and they would have to work hard to pull her round, although the ventilator was proving its worth already, virtually breathing for her until such time as she would—it was to be hoped—take over for herself once more.
The two men muttered together, making their slow, careful examination, and Alexandra, with a moment to spare, took a look around her. Sister Baxter was glowering from behind one of the emergency trolleys, later on, when everything had settled down once more there would probably be a dust-up. Alexandra tried a smile and got a lowering look in return. Lucy Pim, over the first shock of finding herself actually working the various apparatus Alexandra had been so painstakingly teaching her for the last day or so, was proving herself very useful; she would be all right, after all.
Alexandra heaved a sigh of relief and then swallowed it as her eye lighted on the seventh person in the department; a thin, angular lady, no longer young, with a sharp, pointed nose and iron grey hair drawn back into a small bun under what Alexandra could only describe to herself as a lady’s hat. Its wearer, moreover, was clad in a sensible tweed suit, and her feet were shod with equally sensible lace-up shoes. A hint of pearls at the lady’s throat and the gloves and handbag, leather but a little shabby, gave her a possible clue. Someone’s aunt; the very counterpart of aunts of her own, and probably thousands more. The girl’s? She would have to be asked presently, but in the meantime she was behaving with commendable calm and not getting in the way even though she shouldn’t be there in the first place. She caught her eye and they exchanged smiles as she handed the strange doctor an X-ray form just a second before he could open his mouth to ask for one.
Sister Pim had sped away with it, with instructions to bring back the porters with her when he turned his eyes, very cool, on Alexandra. ‘And what are you doing here?’ he wanted to know. ‘Isn’t that a St Job’s cap—’
She eyed him with a similar coolness, not liking his tone. ‘I’m here to get this unit started,’ she told him briefly. He wasn’t English; he spoke it perfectly, but there was something in his deep voice…she would find out later, meanwhile: ‘The lady by the door,’ she prompted him. ‘Is she the mother? If so, she shouldn’t be here—if you would speak to her, I’ll take her along to the waiting room.’
His smile was so unexpected that she caught her breath. ‘My aunt,’ he said, ‘Miss Euphemia Thrums, a formidable lady and of great help to me when this accident occurred. She insisted upon coming with me and I didn’t care to leave her alone.’ His voice was blandly authoritative.
‘Oh,’ said Alexandra, rather at a loss, and then: ‘Were there any relations or friends…the police…?’
‘Are already dealing with it,’ he told her smoothly. ‘The girl was driving herself—presumably there would be papers in her handbag or the car.’
It was time for Alexandra to take her observations again; she bent to her task and was just finished when the porters arrived with the portable X-ray machine, which left her with nothing much to do for a few minutes; Sister Pim was managing very nicely, so Alexandra drifted quietly back to where Sister Baxter was still standing and encountered a look from that lady which would have reduced anyone of a less sturdy nature than hers to pulp.
‘This is highly irregular,’ began Sister Baxter. ‘If anything is said, I shall hold you personally responsible.’ She nodded towards the lady by the door. ‘And who is she, I should like to know, and this man, ordering us about…’
‘He’s a doctor,’ Alexandra pointed out, ‘they do order people about when it’s necessary, you know. After all, they’re the ones who know.’
‘Yes, but who is he?’
Alexandra studied the man. He had an air of authority, but his clothes, though well cut, were a little shabby; there was nothing about him to denote the successful physician or famous surgeon. Her speculations were interrupted by the entry of the hospital’s senior anaesthetist, Doctor White, who added to the mystery by greeting the stranger as an old friend and shaking hands. What was more, he crossed the room to shake hands with Miss Thrums too, although he didn’t stop to talk to her, returning to the couch where the radiographer had done his work and was on the point of leaving. The three doctors went with him, the stranger pausing to lift a beckoning finger at Alexandra, and when she reached his side: ‘You will be good enough to remain with the patient,’ he said, ‘and let us know at once if you have reason for alarm.’ He nodded, staring at her as though he didn’t like her at all, and followed the others out.
Alexandra, checking this and that and making neat entries on the chart, ruminated with the tiny piece of her brain not occupied with her work, that her evening plans had been squashed: it was already an hour after she should have been off duty and she saw no chance of getting away for quite some time; it would have to be decided where the girl was to go, there would be delays while her relations were sent for, another hour, she reckoned before the doctors would make their decisions, and once they had, she vowed silently, she would hand over to the other two Sisters and streak off to her room and pack.
She looked up and caught Miss Thrums’ eyes on her and exclaimed with sudden contrition: ‘Oh, you poor thing—Sister Pim, do you suppose we could charm someone into giving Miss Thrums a cup of tea, she must need one after the nasty time she’s had.’
She was on the point of suggesting that she might like to go to the waiting room down the passage, too, when she remembered that the doctor had brought her with him and would probably turn nasty if she took it upon herself to send his aunt away, however kindly she meant it.
Miss Thrums smiled tiredly. ‘That would be delightful.’ She spoke in a whisper, with due regard for her surroundings, all the same she had a carrying voice. ‘What a very efficient girl you are, Sister—St Job’s, are you not? Miss Trott is a friend of mine.’ Miss Trott was the Principal Nursing Officer and rather an old duck. The doctor’s aunt went on: ‘I hope that poor girl will be all right—we were directly behind her, you know, so fortunate, because Taro was able to give help within seconds.’
She broke off as Sister Pim came back with the tea, and settled back to enjoy it as the men came back. It was Mr White who crossed the room to speak to Alexandra. ‘I believe that you are due back at St Job’s tomorrow, Sister Dobbs? We are hoping that you will co-operate with us in the plan we have decided upon. The patient has a fractured base—she’s very ill, but provided we can get specialist treatment for her within a reasonable time, I think we may hope for complete recovery. I’ve been in touch with Mr Thrush—you know him, of course, and he is willing to accept her as a patient of St Job’s. Now, would you be willing to escort her on the journey—ambulance, of course, and not immediately—possibly in a few hours’ time, by then we should get a very good idea of her condition and be reasonably certain that she can stand the journey. You will have everything laid on, needless to say.’
She liked Mr White, he was elderly and balding and kind, and reminded her of her own father. She agreed at once and he looked relieved, and when she looked across at the stranger, she saw, not relief on his handsome features, but satisfaction—so it was he who had been behind their scheme, she decided shrewdly. She asked on impulse: ‘Could I have this doctor’s name, sir? We shall need it for the report.’
She hadn’t spoken loudly, yet before Mr White could answer, the subject of her question was crossing the room to join them. ‘You agree to what we ask?’ he wanted to know, and when she nodded: ‘My name is van Dresselhuys, you will need it for your report, no doubt.’
‘Thank you. Mine’s Dobbs.’ She gave him a little nod, said ‘Excuse me,’ smiled brilliantly at Doctor White and went back to where Sister Pim was busy with the patient.
The ambulance left four hours later with Alexandra, her packing done in a swift ten minutes or so, in attendance. The stranger and his aunt had disappeared; vaguely, at the back of her busy mind, she was disappointed at this, but there really was no time to indulge in her own thoughts. She supervised the transfer of the girl to the ambulance, and collected the charts and notes from Lucy, who had volunteered to stay on duty until they went. No one had inquired about the girl; the police had drawn a blank and there was nothing in her handbag to give them any clue as to her identity; there was no driving licence there either and the car, a write-off, had borne a Midlands number-plate. Their search for her identity might take some time. Alexandra, hearing this, gave a resigned shrug and went out to the ambulance, primed with Mr White’s instructions for the journey.
There was a Morris 1000 drawn up beside it, in it sat Miss Thrums, and bending over its open, middle-aged bonnet was the strange doctor. He took no notice of Alexandra; it was his aunt who thrust her head out of the car window and said cheerfully: ‘We are accompanying you, Sister—we have to go to London in any case, and my nephew is anxious that the girl should have every care.’
Alexandra bristled. ‘Perhaps he would prefer to travel in the ambulance?’ she asked with dangerous sweetness.
The doctor answered this for himself, without bothering to take his head from under the bonnet. ‘My dear good woman, why on earth should I wish to do that when you are perfectly competent to attend to the patient? We shall travel behind you, and if you need my help you have only to signal me.’
‘Just as you wish,’ said Alexandra, still very sweet, ‘and be so good as not to address me as your good woman.’
She turned her back on his deep chuckle and flounced into the ambulance.
It was a great pity that she had to stop the ambulance twice during the journey and ask for his help; something which he gave with a calm despatch which she was forced to admit was all that she could have asked for. On the second occasion they were delayed for half an hour, working over their patient in the confines of the ambulance, with the ambulance men hovering, helpful and resourceful, at their backs, and when at last the doctor pronounced it safe to continue their journey, he added a rider to the effect that they should make the best speed they could. Luckily they were on the outskirts of Woking by now and at two o’clock in the morning the roads were fairly clear. They arrived at St Job’s without further alarms and the patient was taken at once to the Intensive Care Unit, with Alexandra, her eyes very bright in her tired face, accompanying her. She hadn’t stopped to speak to the doctor; the all-important thing was to get the girl back on to the ventilator again and she heaved a sigh of relief at being back in her own department once more with two night nurses waiting and everything to hand. The girl responded fairly quickly, and once she was sure of that Alexandra gave her report to the Night Sister, repeated it to the Registrar and yawning widely, started off for the Nurses’ Home. She hadn’t seen any more of the doctor and she didn’t expect to; probably he would see Mr Thrush’s registrar and then continue his journey.
She went sleepily down the stairs and found him at the bottom, deep in conversation with the Casualty Officer on duty, but as she reached them, he bade the young man good-bye, took her by the arm and led her through the front hall and down the main corridor, opening a door half way down it and pushing her gently inside.
‘I can’t go in here,’ Alexandra, now very much awake, pointed out, ‘this is the consultants’ room.’
‘I know, but they aren’t here at this time of night—only Aunty. The Night Super sent some coffee down for us and I promised her that I would see that you had a cup before you went to bed.’
Miss Thrums was sitting at the large table in the centre of the room, very upright and looking as though staying up all night in awkward circumstances was something she was quite accustomed to. She nodded bracingly at Alexandra, begged her to take a seat and poured her some coffee.
‘A trying evening,’ she observed. ‘I can only trust that the girl will recover.’
Alexandra murmured, because the doctor had nothing to say, and then asked: ‘Have you somewhere to go for the rest of the night? I could get Night Super to let you have the rooms we keep for relations—you could at least have rest…’
This time the doctor spoke. ‘Very kind, Sister Dobbs, but we have been offered beds at Mr Thrush’s.’ His tone implied that it really was no business of hers, and if she hadn’t been so tired, she might have felt inclined to take him up on that, instead she drank her coffee, said good-bye to Miss Thrums, and taking a brisk farewell of the doctor, started for the door to find him with her as she reached it.
‘You have been very kind,’ he told her, ‘I’m grateful. Let us hope that the patient repays you by recovering.’
‘Yes,’ said Alexandra, vague with tiredness, ‘and I hope they find her family soon, too.’ She knitted her brows, trying to think of something else to say by way of a pleasant farewell and he smiled a little. ‘You’re asleep on your feet. Goodnight, Miss Dobbs.’
It was as she was tumbling into bed that she remembered that he hadn’t said good-bye, only goodnight.
CHAPTER TWO
IT had been a very short night; Alexandra got up and dressed with the greatest reluctance and went down to join her friends at breakfast, a meal eaten in a hurry, although she still found time to answer the questions put to her.
‘And what’s this I hear,’ asked Ruth Page, Women’s Surgical Sister, ‘about you arriving in the small hours with a tall dark stranger? I met Meg coming off night duty and she was full of him—driving a Rolls, I suppose…’
‘As a matter of fact,’ said Alexandra, ‘his hair’s grizzled and he was driving a Morris 1000. Oh, and his aunt was with him.’ When the shrieks of laughter had died down, she added demurely: ‘It went like a bomb.’
‘Yes, but what about him?’ persisted Ruth. ‘What’s his name—how old is he—did he turn you on?’
Alexandra considered. ‘His name’s van Dresselhuys, that’s Dutch, isn’t it—though his English was perfect. I’ve no idea how old he would be and I thought him rather rude and bad-tempered, though,’ she added fairly, ‘he was pretty super when the girl had a cardiac arrest.’ She swallowed the last of her tea and got to her feet. ‘I’d better be on my way, I suppose; there’s a long list and if she’s fit enough they’ll want to operate, though heaven knows where they’ll fit her in.’
Several of her companions got up too and as they walked through the hospital to their various wards, someone asked: ‘This girl—who is she?’
‘That’s just it, no one knows yet. She hadn’t any papers or anything with her, the car was hired from a garage in the Midlands—Wolverhampton, I believe, and until the police can trace her family or friends she can’t be identified.’
‘It’s to be hoped that she’ll be able to tell us herself before long,’ Ruth spoke soberly. ‘I’ll get her once she’s out of the ICU, I suppose?’
‘I should think so—lord, there’s the panic bell, someone’s arresting.’ Alexandra was off down the corridor like a bullet from a gun.
It was old Mr Dasher, who had been in her unit for five days already, he had been admitted a few hours before Alexandra had gone away, and here he was still, she thought worriedly, looking not one scrap better; she got to work on him and was getting a little response when Anthony Ferris arrived. It wasn’t until the old man was once more breathing and she had spent a careful five minutes with the unconscious girl that she felt able to leave things in the hands of her staff nurse and go along to her office, so that she might go through the various papers and messages on her desk. And of course Anthony went with her, and when she sat down, sat down too, on the only other chair in the room.
Alexandra, short-tempered from lack of sleep and an unexplained dissatisfaction with life in general, frowned at him. ‘Anthony, I’ve heaps of jobs to catch up on and that girl will probably be going to theatre…’
He smiled at her with a condescending tolerance which set her splendid teeth on edge and made it worse by saying: ‘Poor little girl—I hear you had to put up with some foreign type, ordering you around. One of those know-alls, I suppose.’
‘Then you suppose wrong.’ Alexandra had forgotten the Dutchman’s arrogant manner and couldn’t spring fast enough to his defence. ‘He was extremely civil and he knew exactly what to do— I should never have got the girl here alive if it hadn’t been for him.’
Anthony was too conceited a man to be worried by her championship of someone he hadn’t even met. ‘My poor sweet,’ he said, ‘how kind of you to stick up for him…’
‘If I might echo those words?’ queried Doctor van Dresselhuys from the door.
She stared at him, her pretty mouth slightly open; she hadn’t expected him, though she had thought of him several times, and here he was, in her office, of all places. She said, inadequately: ‘Oh, hullo, I thought you’d gone.’
He leaned against the wall, dwarfing Anthony, and looking, despite his well-worn clothes, elegant. Indeed, he made the other man’s rather way-out style of dressing look rather cheap. ‘Er—no. Mr Thrush asked me if I would give the anaesthetic—he intends to do a decompression.’
His cool eyes flickered over Anthony, and Alexandra made haste to introduce the two men, but they had little to say to each other; after a few minutes Anthony announced, rather importantly, that he had work to do and edged to the door, saying over-loudly as he went: ‘I’ll see you as usual this evening, Alexandra—we might dine and dance somewhere.’ At the door he turned. ‘’Bye, darling.’
Doctor van Dresselhuys hadn’t moved, he still leant against the door, the picture of idleness, only his eyes gleamed. When Anthony had gone, he asked casually: ‘Going to marry him?’
‘No, I’m not!’ declared Alexandra explosively. Anthony had behaved like a bad-tempered child and she had given him no right at all to call her darling; he’d been showing off, of course, hoping to impress this large man, whose very largeness, she suspected, had annoyed him, and who, unless she was very much mistaken, was secretly amused.
He didn’t say anything else, just went on looking at her with his blue eyes until she felt the soft colour creeping into her cheeks. It deepened when he said softly: ‘You’re a remarkably lovely girl.’
She disliked him, she told herself seethingly, as much as she disliked Anthony—as much as she disliked men with a capital M. She pressed her lips together and lifted her chin at him, and was outraged when he asked, still casually: ‘Did I come at the wrong moment—was your young man on the point of proposing?’
‘No, he was not,’ she snapped, ‘and even if he were,’ she went on crossly, ‘I really don’t see that it’s any business of yours.’ She got up. ‘And you really must excuse me, I have work to do.’
‘Ah, yes. I’ve come to see the patient, if you would be so kind?’ He stood aside to let her pass and followed her into the unit, where he became all at once a doctor, asking questions in a calm voice, reading the notes, examining the girl with meticulous care. There was no hidden amusement now; he was absorbed in what he was doing, and Alexandra was no longer a lovely girl; she was a skilled someone in a white gown, who answered his questions with the intelligence expected of her. Finally he nodded, thanked her and went away; she didn’t see him again for quite some time, but when the theatre nurse came to escort the girl to theatre, she was treated to that young lady’s ecstatic opinion of him; he had, it seemed, charmed every female he had encountered. Alexandra was left with the feeling that she must be lacking in something or other.
The girl came back, holding her own well, and as far as was possible to judge at this stage, the operation had been a success. Alexandra set to work on her, and when Doctor van Dresselhuys came to see the patient in Mr Thrush’s company, she was far too occupied to spare a thought for him.
Late off duty, because she had been a little anxious about her patient, Alexandra took the lift down to ground level, nipped smartly along a succession of passages and crossed the small ornamental garden which separated the Nurses’ Home from the hospital. It was pitch dark by now and there was no reason why she should encounter anyone at that hour, so that the vague feeling of disappointment she experienced was all the more surprising. In her room, she kicked off her shoes, removed her cap and went along to run a bath; she met Ruth on the way back and delayed to share a pot of tea with her. Anthony had said that he would meet her, but he hadn’t said when or where; his airy remark about meeting her as usual meant nothing; they had gone out fairly frequently together, it was true, but he had implied that they went dining and dancing nightly. Frowningly, she could only remember two occasions in the last three months or so when he had taken her somewhere really decent for dinner, and never to a dance.
She accepted a second cup; let Anthony wait, better still, let him telephone over to the home and ask if she was ready.
She had bathed and was in her dressing gown doing her hair when someone shouted up the stairs that she was wanted on the telephone. She went without haste and said a grumpy ‘Well?’ into the receiver.
‘Good lord,’ Anthony’s voice sounded irritable. ‘What’s keeping you? You’ve been off duty for an hour or more.’
‘So I have, but not knowing where I was to meet you as usual or to which marvellous place you were taking me to dine and dance, there didn’t seem much point in doing anything about it.’
She heard his embarrassed laugh. ‘Look here, old girl, you must have known I only said that because that nonchalant type was standing there laughing at me. Come on now,’ his voice took on a wheedling note, ‘throw on a coat and we’ll go out and have a meal.’
She hesitated; she had missed her supper and all she had in her room was a tin of biscuits. She said, ‘All right,’ and added, ‘I think you were very silly,’ before she put down the receiver.
He was waiting for her at the hospital entrance when she got there, ten minutes later. Because it was such a dark and damp evening, she had put on a raincoat, belted round her slim waist, and dragged on a wool cap, shrouding her dark hair, then added a matching scarf, yards long, which she wound round her neck to keep out the cold; totally unglamorous, she decided, taking a quick look at herself, but sensible.
It was a nasty quirk of fate that Doctor van Dresselhuys should have been standing in the entrance hall, talking to Mr Thrush. He looked up as she went past them, his brows arching slowly as he took deliberate stock of her, while his mouth curved into a smile, conveying plainly that her appearance hardly tallied with that of a young woman on her way to dine and dance. She scowled at him, smiled sweetly at Mr Thrush, and joined Anthony, giving him a look which caused him to say: ‘You look like one of the Furies!’
She didn’t answer him at once; she was still smarting under Doctor van Dresselhuys’ amused, faintly mocking look, but as they went down the steps she asked: ‘Where are we going?’
‘How about that little Italian place? It’s not too far to walk and it’s cheap.’
He took her arm as he spoke, in much the same way, she thought resentfully, as a man might slip a collar on his dog. She freed her arm, and he muttered: ‘Huh—in a bad mood, are you?’ an unfair remark which hardly served to increase her good humour, so that they went down the street mentally as well as physically apart.
They patched up their differences during the evening. Anthony, with his hasty apology a little carelessly offered, plunged into a tale of how he had got the better of old Sister Tucker on Women’s Medical, which, seeing that that lady was a byword in the hospital for her short temper and cursory treatment of all doctors below the rank of consultant, should have made Alexandra laugh. She did indeed smile, but it struck her that Anthony had been a bit mean with the old tartar. After all, she had been at St Job’s for more than thirty years and was the best nurse the hospital had ever had; she was due to retire soon, and most people, while grumbling at her fierce tongue, secretly liked her, taking her tellings-off in good part. It was disquieting to discover that Anthony wasn’t quite as nice as she had thought him to be and this feeling was heightened by the fact that she was tired and a little depressed and he had insisted on their walking back, because, as he explained, the exercise was good for them both. She wondered secretly if he grudged the price of a taxi, but later, in bed and thinking about it, she came to the conclusion that she had done him less than justice; he had his way to make, like anyone else, and probably he would end up very comfortably off because he hadn’t wasted his money. She reminded herself that he was all that a girl could wish for—well, almost all, and closed her eyes. She was almost asleep when she realized that she wasn’t thinking about Anthony at all but of that beastly Doctor van Dresselhuys.
She saw him the next morning. He arrived with Mr Thrush, checked the patient’s progress, offered one or two suggestions in a diffident manner, and then blandly accepted her rather cold invitation to have coffee in her office. Once there, neither Mr Thrush nor he seemed disposed to leave—indeed, after ten minutes, Alexandra excused herself on the plea of work to do, and left them with the coffee pot between them, deep in a learned discussion concerning the pre-central gyrus of the brain.
She thought it highly likely that neither gentleman, although both had risen politely to their feet as she left them, had really noticed her going or heard a word of what she had said.
She had no occasion to go to her office for quite some time after that, but when she did she was surprised to find the Dutchman still there, at her desk now, writing busily. He looked up as she went in and said coolly: ‘Forgive me if I don’t get up—these are a few calculations and notes which must be written up immediately.’
The papers she wanted were in the desk; she edged past him and knelt down the better to reach the bottom drawer at one side of it, aware that he had stopped writing.
‘Have you made it up?’ he wanted to know.
She lifted her head and found his face bending over her, only a few inches away. ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she said indignantly.
‘Don’t behave like a schoolgirl,’ he begged her, ‘you know very well what I mean. You looked like a thunder-cloud yesterday evening, and don’t try and tell me that you went dining and dancing in that elderly raincoat—besides, you walked down the street as though you hated—er—whatever his name is. You have a very eloquent back.’
‘It’s none of your business,’ she told him hotly. ‘Really…’
‘Now, that is unkind; I like to see other people happy.’ His voice held a mocking note. ‘And you are not. I’ll wager my day’s fees that he walked you back.’
‘It’s healthy exercise,’ she declared, too quickly, ‘and he hasn’t got a car yet—not even a Morris 1000,’ she added nastily.
He ignored this piece of rudeness. ‘A nice little car,’ he observed smoothly, ‘reliable, cheap to run and not too fast.’
She was diverted enough to exclaim: ‘It doesn’t look your sort of car at all,’ and then remembered to add: ‘Not that I am in the least interested in what you drive.’
He was staring at her. ‘If I were to ask you out to dinner with me, would you come?’
‘No.’ The word had popped out before she had quenched the thought that she would like to, very much.
‘I thought perhaps you wouldn’t. Ah, well, I have survived worse disappointments. And now, young woman, if you have finished kneeling at my feet, perhaps I might continue to borrow your office for another ten minutes or so.’
She closed the drawer deliberately, clutching the papers she had sought; there was a great deal she would have liked to have said, but she thought that, on the whole, it might be better to hold her tongue, so she edged past him again and flounced out in such a bad temper that her staff nurse wanted to know if she felt ill.
She didn’t see him for the rest of the day, so that by the evening she believed him gone, which was a pity because she still hadn’t discovered just who he was. A good friend of Mr Thrush, that was obvious—perhaps he had a practice in England even though he was a Dutchman; that, combined with the fact that he had been at the scene of the accident, would be enough to make him take an interest in the patient.
No one had come forward to claim the girl; police inquiries, photos in the newspapers, none of these had had any results. Alexandra, hopeful of her patient’s recovery, wished that she could regain consciousness, so that they could discover her name, but at the end of another two days she was still unconscious, so that Alexandra, with two days off to take, was in two minds not to take them. But common sense prevailed; she needed a break, if only to get away from Anthony, so that she could make up her mind about him. She went off duty that evening and caught the train to Dorchester by the skin of her teeth, and instead of having a quiet think as she had intended, went to sleep, only waking as the train drew in at her destination.
Jim, her younger brother, was waiting for her, still in his anorak and gumboots because he had come straight from the farm where he was finishing the last few months of his course at the Agricultural College. He greeted her with off-handed affection, caught up her case as though it had been a paper bag and led the way to where the Land Rover he had borrowed was waiting.
‘Nice of you to pick me up,’ said Alexandra, disposing her person as comfortably as possible. ‘Is Father busy?’
‘Up to his eyes—’flu.’ He started the engine. ‘You’re OK?’
‘Yes, thanks. How’s work?’
She sat listening to him talking about his job as he drove them at a great rate away from the town, through Cerne Abbas and then beyond, turning presently into a country road leading to the village where her father had his vast rural practice. The lights were shining a welcome as he brought the Land Rover to a squealing halt before her home; a rambling, thatched house of no great size but lacking nothing of picturesque architecture.
She ran inside, glad to be home, to find her mother in the kitchen getting her supper. Mrs Dobbs was like her daughter—indeed, her husband always declared that she had been twice as pretty as her daughter when she had been younger. Even now she was still a comely woman, who hugged her daughter with real delight and advised her to go and see her father in his study while she dished up.
Doctor Dobbs was catching up on his book work, but he cast this aside as Alexandra went in, declaring that she was a sight for sore eyes, and just in time to add up his accounts for him, something she did quickly before carrying him off to the dining-room while she ate her supper.
Her parents sat at the table with her, not eating, but plying her with food and questions and answering her own questions in their turn, and presently Jim, finished for the day, joined them and then Jeff, studying to be a vet in Bristol and home for a week’s leave. Only her eldest brother, Edmund, was absent; qualified a year ago, he was now a partner in his father’s practice with a surgery in a neighbouring village where he lived with his wife and baby daughter.
Alexandra beamed round at them all. ‘It’s super to be home,’ she declared. ‘Every time I come, I swear I’ll give up nursing.’
There was a general laugh, although Mrs Dobbs looked hopeful. She was too clever to say anything, though, but instead inquired about the girl Alexandra had been looking after. ‘The local papers have had a lot to say about it,’ she told her daughter, ‘how strange it is that no one has come forward. And who is this doctor who saw the accident? There was a lot about him too, but no facts, if you know what I mean.’
‘I don’t know much about him, either,’ said Alexandra. ‘He—he just came in with her, you know, and when we went up to St Job’s, he came too.’
‘In the ambulance?’
‘No—his car. A Morris 1000.’
Even her father looked up then. ‘He can’t be doing very well,’ he observed. ‘It’s a nice enough car, but more suitable to elderly ladies and retired gents than to a doctor. Is he elderly?’
She shook her head. ‘No—forty or thereabouts, I suppose. Perhaps younger—it’s hard to tell.’
‘Good-looking?’ Her mother had been dying to ask that.
‘Well, yes—I really didn’t notice.’
It was the kind of answer to make Mrs Dobbs dart a sharp glance at her daughter and change the subject. ‘How is Anthony?’ she wanted to know.
Alexandra’s high forehead creased into a frown. ‘Oh, all right—busy, you know.’ She yawned and her mother said at once: ‘You’re tired, dear—bed for you. Is there anything you want to do tomorrow?’
Alexandra shook her head. ‘No, Mother dear. I’ll drive Father on his rounds if he’d like me to, it’s a nice way of seeing the country.’
Two days of home did her a world of good; she hated going back; she always did, but there would be more days off and in the meantime work didn’t seem as bad as it had done. And indeed, it wasn’t; the unit had filled up, and filled up still further that morning, even though temporarily, with a case from theatre which had collapsed in the recovery room. It was late afternoon by the time the man was well enough to send back to his ward, and Alexandra was already late off duty, but before she went she paid one more visit to the girl. She was doing well now; another day and she would be sent down to the Women’s Surgical ward. It was a pity that she hadn’t regained consciousness, though. Alexandra bent over the quiet face and checked a breath as the girl opened her eyes.
‘Hullo,’ said Alexandra, and smiled reassuringly. ‘Don’t worry, you’re in hospital. You had an accident, but you’re getting better.’
The blue eyes held intelligence. ‘My head aches.’
‘I’m afraid it may do for a little while, but you’ll be given something for it. My dear, what is your name?’
The girl looked at her for a long moment. ‘I can’t remember,’ she spoke in a thin whisper, ‘I can’t remember anything.’
‘Not to worry,’ said Alexandra comfortably, ‘it will all come back presently.’ She pressed the bell beside the bed, and when a nurse came, not quite running, asked her to let the Surgical Registrar know that Mr Thrush’s patient was conscious and would he come as soon as he could.
He came at once, and a few moments later, Mr Thrush with Doctor van Dresselhuys. Alexandra went to meet them and the surgeon said in tones of satisfaction: ‘This is splendid, Sister, and how fortunate that Doctor van Dresselhuys should have been here with me. And now, before we see the patient, give me your observations, Sister.’
Which she did, very concisely, before going with them to the bedside.
The girl had fallen asleep with all the suddenness of a child. Alexandra counted her pulse. ‘Almost normal and much stronger. How pretty she is with all that golden hair.’ She smiled at the two men. ‘Like a bright penny.’
Mr Thrush nodded, but it was the Dutchman who said quietly: ‘She has no name, has she, not until she remembers… What you just said, Sister, about a bright penny. Could we not call her Penny Bright?’
He too was looking down at the girl, and for no reason at all, Alexandra suffered a pang at the expression on his face. It was ridiculous to mind; why, they didn’t even like each other, and having rescued the girl like that must have caused him to feel something towards her. ‘It’s a marvellous idea,’ she agreed at once. ‘It will worry her dreadfully if we don’t call her something, and she might be like this for some time, mightn’t she?’
‘One can never tell with retrograde amnesia,’ said Mr Thrush. ‘A month, perhaps longer, who knows. You’ll do all in your power, I know, Sister.’ He moved to the other side of the bed. ‘I think I’ll just go over her reflexes.’
Alexandra, off duty at last—for even after the men had gone, she had to add everything to her report—went first to the hospital entrance. Anthony had asked her to meet him there at six o’clock, and it was already half past that hour and she was still in uniform. He was there all right, walking up and down and looking impatiently at his watch every few seconds, and when she reached him and began to explain why she was late, he hardly listened, nor did he give her a chance to finish what she was saying.
‘I must say,’ he began furiously, ‘that you have no thought for my convenience at all—here have I been waiting for the last forty minutes—the least you could have done would have been to send a message. And I can’t for the life of me see why you needed to stay; the girl won’t die if you leave her to someone else,’ he pointed out nastily.
Alexandra sighed. She was tired and it would have been nice if she could have told him about the girl regaining consciousness and how pleased everyone was; she repressed the thought that when Anthony had been late on more than one occasion she had been expected to wait for him uncomplainingly and then listen to his weighty explanations afterwards. But he was tired too, she mustn’t forget that, so she said now in a reasonable voice, ‘Oh, I know that, but it helped Mr Thrush if I stayed on for a bit, because I was there when she became conscious and he wanted to know exactly what had happened. You see, she’s got a retrograde amnesia—she can’t remember anything, not even her name. We’re going to call her Penny Bright.’
His lip curled. ‘I suppose you wasted more time thinking that one up?’
She answered without thinking. ‘As a matter of fact, I didn’t, it was Doctor van Dresselhuys.’
‘Now I know why you’re late—hanging around after that Dutchman. I’ve seen you staring at him.’
She was cold with rage, but she kept her voice reasonably still. ‘That’s a silly thing to say; we don’t even like each other, but you know as well as I do that you can work quite well with someone, even if you don’t get on well. And I don’t look at him.’
They were standing at the door, and people going in and out looked curiously at them. There was a fearful draught too and she shivered. ‘Look, shall I go and change?’
She really had no wish to go out now, her evening had been spoilt and Anthony was in a vile mood, and so, she had to admit, was she.
‘Don’t bother,’ he told her with a nasty little sneer. ‘Why not go back to that fellow… I must say, Alexandra, that your behaviour is hardly what one would expect of a doctor’s wife.’
That really was the last straw, the reasonableness exploded into healthy rage. ‘Whose wife?’ she demanded. ‘I wasn’t aware that I had made any plans to be a doctor’s wife, and even if I had, I haven’t any more,’ she went on rapidly, getting a little mixed by reason of her strong feeling, ‘and how dare you talk to me about my behaviour—the utter gall…’ she choked on her temper, turned on her heel and crossed the hall, straight into the solid seventeen or eighteen stones of Doctor van Dresselhuys.
He caught her by the shoulders and set her back on her feet and then with his hands still there, said softly: ‘Oh, dear, what a nasty habit I have of intruding into your love life!’
‘It’s not my love life,’ she muttered in a fine rage. ‘I haven’t got one, and I wish you wouldn’t keep…’ She stopped and sniffed, aware that at any moment she was going to burst into tears. ‘If you would let go of me,’ she besought him, and when he did, tore off through the hospital until she reached the haven of her room. A hearty burst of tears relieved her feelings enormously, and thankful that there was no one else off duty, she went along to make a pot of tea and then, very much refreshed, had a bath. By the time her friends came off duty after supper, she looked very much as usual and was able to join in their talk as though she hadn’t a care in the world. It was only after all the various doors had closed and it was quiet and dark that she got out her writing case and found a pen.
Miss Trott showed considerable astonishment when Alexandra, her written resignation in her hand, presented herself in the office the following morning. She heard her rather feeble reasons for leaving without comment and only when she had finished did she remark: ‘This is a great surprise to me, Sister Dobbs, I had come to regard you as one of my more permanent senior nurses. Naturally, I had expected that you might leave in order to get married…’ She paused expectantly, but Alexandra had nothing to say to that, and she frowned slightly, thwarted out of the speech she had intended to make so that Alexandra might be persuaded to change her mind. She sighed. ‘Who is to take your place?’
‘Well, Staff Nurse Thorne is very good, Miss Trott, she’s been my right hand for more than two years, she would be perfectly capable of taking over the unit, and everyone likes her.’
‘You are determined to leave, Sister Dobbs?’
‘Yes, quite determined, Miss Trott.’
‘And not, I fancy, entirely for the reasons which you have given me?’
‘No, Miss Trott.’
‘Well, in that case I must accept your resignation, although with the greatest reluctance. And I will consider Staff Nurse Thorne for the post.’ She smiled faintly in dismissal. Alexandra was one of her favourites, although she was careful not to show partiality for any one of her staff. That she was labouring under strong feelings was obvious to Miss Trott’s experienced eye, trained to notice such things. Equally obvious was the fact that she was to be told nothing but a string of flimsy reasons as to why she wished to leave. She sighed and pulled a sheaf of papers towards her, aware of a number of half buried, wistful thoughts.
Alexandra’s thoughts were neither wistful nor half buried; they were angry and a little frightened; she had burnt her boats behind her for the silliest of reasons and on an impulse. She had surely made it clear to Anthony that she didn’t wish to marry him; they could have continued to be friends and he would have found another girl, more amenable than she so that she could have stayed on in the unit and everything would have been settled in a nice, civilized fashion, but upon reflection, it wouldn’t have done at all. Anthony wasn’t the kind of man to accept her as a friend once all idea of marriage between them had been scotched and meeting him each day would have been embarrassing to them both. Not only that, she reminded herself, he had been unreasonably ill-tempered, shouting at her and making snide remarks about Doctor van Dresselhuys. Not that she had any sympathy with that gentleman, always poking his large arrogant nose into her affairs.
With difficulty she brought her mind back to her own problems; she had a month in which to find another job—time enough, indeed, a few weeks at home while she looked around might be a good thing—just what she needed to cure the vague restlessness she had felt for the last few days.
She quickened her footsteps, back to the ICU, confident that she had her future well in hand.
CHAPTER THREE
IT was the second week of November, which meant that Alexandra would be free to leave well before Christmas, a sound reason to postpone the finding of a job until after the festive season. And indeed, during the ensuing weeks, she found herself singularly loath to set about serious job-hunting; she had made several tentative inquiries and met with encouraging replies, but she found herself unable to make up her mind about any of them, something which puzzled her just as much as it puzzled her family and friends. In the end she concluded that it was because she didn’t want to leave Penny Bright; the girl was making excellent progress now, down in Women’s Surgical, and each day she became prettier, only her memory, for the moment at least, had gone, and without relations or friends to stimulate it, it was proving a difficult task to break down the barrier her accident had caused. Mr Thrush was of the opinion that it would return, given time and patience, in the meantime he was satisfied with her progress. Alexandra went to visit her each day, usually as she was going off duty in the early evening, and it was on one of these occasions, two weeks or more after she had decided to leave, that Penny surprised her by saying: ‘Doctor van Dresselhuys says that I am almost well. I shall be glad to leave here, though everyone has been very nice to me.’
Alexandra smiled. ‘Well, of course, why shouldn’t they be?’ and could not prevent herself from asking: ‘Does he come often, the doctor?’
Penny answered readily. ‘Oh, yes, every week. He brings me books and magazines now that I may read a little and he shows me pictures of places and asks me if I know them. Sometimes he’s stern, though, and says I must do as I’m told…’
‘Why does he say that?’
‘Well, sometimes I don’t do as Sister tells me and then I get giddy—I shan’t be giddy for always, shall I?’
‘No, of course not, Penny, but you gave your head a nasty bang, you know, and it’ll take a little time to get quite well.’
She gave the girl sitting so docilely in the chair a motherly look. What a charming creature she was; no wonder the housemen made a beeline for her the moment they came into the ward, and so, apparently, did Doctor van Dresselhuys. She frowned, annoyed at having thought about him at all; she had dismissed him to the back of her mind days ago—she had tried to dismiss him altogether, but he had refused to go—and now, with just one remark from Penny, here he was again, every line of his handsome, aloof face well remembered, every note of his deep voice ringing in her ears.
She found herself wondering if she would encounter him on one of his visits, but either he had just gone or was expected shortly; he was never there when she was. After a few days she came to the conclusion that he didn’t want to meet her again.
She was finding the month hard to get through; she and Anthony couldn’t avoid meeting each other, and although she kept up a semblance of friendliness towards him, he chose to ignore this, behaving as though his feelings were much injured, and taking care to let everyone see it. She found herself longing to be gone even though her plans for the future were still vague. Even the news that Penny was considered well enough to leave hospital, while delighting her, did nothing to spur her on to the tiresome task of finding another job, let alone make up her mind where she wanted to go.
A decision which, as it turned out, she didn’t have to make, for the very next day, a few minutes after she had gained her room after her day’s duty, the floor telephone shrilled, bidding her go all the way downstairs again because Doctor van Dresselhuys would like a word with her.
Not in the best of tempers at this infringement of her free time, she dug her feet back into her shoes, put back the cap she had just taken off her rather untidy head, and trailed down four flights of stairs, to find him pacing impatiently to and fro in the hall.
The moment he saw her, however, he stopped his perambulations and came towards her, reaching the bottom step at the same time as she did, so that she found her eyes almost on a level with his. They stared at each other silently until she asked in a nettled tone: ‘You wanted to see me, Doctor van Dresselhuys?’
‘Yes. Penny is leaving the hospital in two days’ time, of course you know that.’ His voice was almost curt. ‘I understand that you are also leaving and have no immediate plans for the future. Penny has nowhere to go and until such time as she regains her memory, or her family come forward to claim her, my aunt has offered to give her a home. It is, of course, out of the question that she should do this without help. It would oblige me—us, if you would accompany her as a companion—nurse, whatever you like to call yourself, until her future is assured—at a not too distant date, I hope. We would naturally pay you your present salary.’
Alexandra opened her mouth and closed it again. She had been very much surprised at his offer, and now she was still more surprised to find that her instinctive response had been to say yes without even bothering to think it over. But she was a level-headed girl, not liking to be rushed into anything, so she thought about it for a few minutes, then: ‘That would be a great deal too much money,’ she observed. ‘Looking after one girl is hardly the same as running a big unit.’
He disregarded this. ‘You’ll come?’ His cool assumption that she would come piqued her. ‘I was going home for Christmas…’
‘Would you have gone if you had remained at St Job’s?’
Honesty compelled her to say that she wouldn’t, even though it annoyed her very much to have to confess it. He nodded in a satisfied way, which annoyed her even more. ‘Then I can take it as settled?’
‘No, you can’t,’ she snapped. ‘Do you always bulldoze your own way over other people? You’ve told me nothing; merely asked me to take a job. I don’t even know where your aunt lives.’
He smiled at her with a sudden charm which took her breath.
‘I’ve annoyed you, I’m sorry. I’ve been careless of your feelings and quite thoughtless; that is because I have been considering this plan for the last few days and I very much want you to take the job. You see, Penny is fond of you, and you have helped her a good deal even though she hasn’t been in your care for the last couple of weeks. You are a sensible woman and resourceful too, and I think—so does Mr Thrush—that if anyone can help Penny to overcome her amnesia, you are that one. Besides, Aunt Euphemia likes you.’
He paused and turned away to stare out of the small window, although there was nothing to see in the outside dark. ‘And you are quite right, I have told you nothing. My aunt has a small house—a cottage—in Suffolk. Rather remote, I should warn you, the nearest town of any size is Needham Market, and that’s no size at all. The cottage is a mile from the nearest village, Denningham. Do you drive?’
‘Yes.’
‘Ah, well, there will be no problem there, and little or nothing for you to do other than keep Penny under your eye, look to her health and try constantly, without her being too aware of it, to coax back her memory, even her name would help. We have decided to wait another two or three weeks, and if there are no developments during that time, then we shall have to do some more thinking. It is extraordinary that none of her family or friends have come forward; she may of course be in the unhappy position of having neither, but I hardly think that is the case.’ He gave her a direct look. ‘Would you mind very much about Christmas?’
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Betty Neels
Mills & Boon presents the complete Betty Neels collection. Timeless tales of heart-warming romance by one of the world’s best-loved romance authors.What was the truth about Penny? Sister Alexandra Dobbs met the distinguished Dutch doctor, Taro van Dresselhuys, when he asked her to help with Penny, a teenager with amnesia. It didn’t take Alexandra long to fall in love with Taro – but Penny did too.It had to be a teenage crush, but Taro did little to discourage the girl and why did he always side with Penny against Alexandra? It was then that Alexandra began to have suspicions about Penny…
“A lovely morning,” observed the doctor.
“Heavenly—the mist makes everything look like fairyland….”
“A cobweb morning—that’s what it’s called in these parts—did you not know that?”
She smiled up at him. “No, I didn’t. It’s a beautiful description.”
He said seriously, “Yes, and you are a beautiful girl, Alexandra.” He bent his head to kiss her, taking his time about it. Then, “I have to go now,” he told her abruptly, and went.
Alexandra had up till now thought of her flagrant worship of him as a child’s gratitude for what he had done for her. Now she wasn’t so sure. She was very young, of course, but what had age to do with loving someone?
About the Author
Romance readers around the world were sad to note the passing of BETTY NEELS in June 2001. Her career spanned thirty years, and she continued to write into her ninetieth year. To her millions of fans, Betty epitomized the romance writer, and yet she began writing almost by accident. She had retired from nursing, but her inquiring mind still sought stimulation. Her new career was born when she heard a lady in her local library bemoaning the lack of good romance novels. Betty’s first book, Sister Peters in Amsterdam, was published in 1969, and she eventually completed 134 books. Her novels offer a reassuring warmth that was very much a part of her own personality. She was a wonderful writer, and she will be greatly missed. Her spirit and genuine talent will live on in all her stories.
Cobweb Morning
Betty Neels
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER ONE
THE hospital dining-room was almost empty save for the maid on duty, wiping down tables in a belligerent manner and in an ever-increasing circle around the one occupied table, whose three occupants watched her warily between their mouthfuls of the wholesome if unimaginative fish pie which had been all that was left on the day’s menu. She returned their looks with a cross one of her own and spoke sourly.
‘There ain’t no afters, it’ll ’ave ter be cheese and biscuits.’
The eldest of the three ladies, a thin person in her forties with an ill-tempered face and wearing a ward Sister’s uniform, merely frowned, while the small, pretty creature sitting opposite her, also in Sister’s uniform but looking somehow unaccustomed to it, looked apologetically at the speaker and murmured that it didn’t matter. It was left to the third member of the party to turn a pair of fine eyes in the maid’s direction and request her in a crisp voice to bring the cheese and biscuits. ‘And I have no doubt,’ she went on in her pleasant voice, ‘that you can find us a pot of tea, can’t you, Bertha?’
She smiled with such charm that the grumpy Bertha smiled back, flung down her cloth, and although muttering, went away to fetch what had been requested of her, while the Sister who had spoken sat back in her chair and began a desultory conversation with her two companions. She was a very pretty young woman, with a creamy skin and abundant hair, as dark as her eyes, and with a delightful nose which tilted ever so slightly at its tip above a generously curved mouth and a small determined chin. She was a tall, well-built girl, whose figure showed off to perfection the uniform she was wearing—that of a hospital Sister, too, but rather different from the others, and decidedly better fitting, moreover, the neat coil of hair above her neck was crowned with the frilled and goffered cap of one of the famous London hospitals, its strings tied in a bow under her chin; a piece of old-fashioned nonsense which vastly became her.
The cheese and biscuits and a large pot of tea arrived, were consumed hurriedly, and the three ladies prepared to leave. It was already two o’clock as they rose from the table and the November afternoon had dwindled into a wet, grey prospect which promised an even worse evening. Alexandra Dobbs twitched her bows into a more comfortable position with a well-kept hand and looked out of the window as they crossed the large, comfortless room. There was nothing to see outside; a hotchpotch of walls and annexes and a few trees beyond; she would have liked to have been back at her own hospital, with the traffic thundering past in a subdued roar and the prospect of a pleasant evening in the Sisters’ sitting-room when she went off duty, or what was more likely, a meal out with one of the Medical Registrars, Anthony Ferris—a young man who, at thirty, was climbing up his particular ladder successfully enough and had lately given her to believe that he would like her to climb with him. Indeed, she had wondered once or twice in the last few days if she would decide to marry him; she had, since the age of seventeen—ten years ago—been the recipient of a number of proposals of marriage, and while refusing them politely, had taken none of them seriously, but Anthony was different; he was ambitious, he wanted a consulting practice, a good income and a suitable wife. The only reason that she hadn’t encouraged him so far was because she had a niggling feeling that she wasn’t suitable. Besides, when she really thought seriously about it, she wasn’t sure that she wanted to marry him; she had told herself that it was silly to indulge in childish fancies, Anthony and she were well suited—everyone who knew them told her that—and yet she had the oddest feeling that somewhere in the world there was a man waiting for her—a man about whom she would have no doubts at all.
This nebulous figure was at the back of her mind now, as she walked back with her companions to the new Intensive Care Unit, recently opened at the hospital—a small unit of two beds, for the hospital was small, too; serving a provincial town and its surrounding rural west country area. It was this unit which was the reason for her being there; she had been Sister-in-Charge of the large, always busy unit at St Job’s for several years now, and had been seconded to the hospital in order to instruct its staff: Sister Baxter, who had no wish to be trained, anyway, not because she didn’t want to run the new unit, but because she considered that no one could instruct her about anything; she knew it already, and Sister Pim, very young and inexperienced and quite frankly terrified of Sister Baxter. A fine setup, Alexandra considered as she went over the apparatus just once more. It was the third day of her visit and she was due back in the morning; it was a pity, without wishing anyone any harm, that a patient needing intensive care couldn’t be admitted, so that she could judge for herself if Sister Baxter knew what she was about. She very much doubted it, and Sister Pim, although a charming girl, had had no experience at all; she had barely qualified when she had been offered the post. On her own she might do very well, but with Sister Baxter bullying her she would turn into a yes-woman, doing what she was told whether it was right or not.
A pity, mused Alexandra, who had never been a yes-woman in her life, partly because she had an elder brother and two younger ones, all of whom had made it their business to see that she could stand up for herself. Her mother, watching her lovely little daughter climbing trees, swimming like a fish and giving as good as she got when it came to holding her own against her brothers, had at times worried that she might grow up a tomboy, but Alexandra hadn’t; she had become a charming girl with nice manners, a willingness to help at church bazaars and other rural events, a pleasant way with children, and an endless patience with the elderly and their foibles. The perfect wife, Mrs Dobbs had told herself, well satisfied, and had spent the next eight or nine years wondering why Alexandra didn’t get married. Instead the dear girl had carved a career for herself in the nursing profession and had shown no signs of wanting to marry at all, although just lately Mrs Dobbs had been more hopeful; Alexandra had mentioned, more and more frequently, Anthony Ferris. Mrs Dobbs, an incurable romantic, allowed herself to plan a wedding outfit, but took great care to keep her hopes to herself.
The short afternoon slid into dusk and then dark. Sister Baxter went to her tea, taking the meek little Lucy Pim with her, and Alexandra, due off duty when they returned, set about making a final check before she left. She still had to see the Senior Nursing Officer, but that wouldn’t take long—she would pack that evening, she told herself contentedly, and catch an early morning train back to London.
The other two had returned, and she was on the point of leaving them when there was the sound of a car, driven hard and braking to a halt outside the hospital entrance. It was followed, after the shortest possible interval, by the sound of footsteps coming down the corridor towards them, and an imperative voice issuing instructions. Alexandra, hearing it, felt a pang of sympathy for the elderly porter on duty—he liked to do things in his own time and it was obvious that just for once, he wasn’t being given that chance.
The owner of the voice appeared seconds later, an immensely tall man and powerfully built, making light of the burden he was carrying—an unconscious girl. He paused momentarily as he entered and asked without preamble: ‘Who’s in charge here?’
Sister Baxter, bristling with authority, answered him. ‘I am, but this isn’t the Casualty Department; there isn’t one at this hospital, you must go to…’
She wasn’t given the chance to finish; the man had laid the girl down gently on a couch and was bending over her. ‘I know, I know,’ he said impatiently, ‘but this girl’s been in a car crash and she needs to go on to a ventilator at once. I’ve no intention of travelling another five or six miles to have the Casualty Officer tell me that she will have to be brought back here for treatment. Kindly summon the officer on duty and give me a hand.’ He added as an afterthought: ‘I’m a doctor.’
He lifted his head and looked at Sister Baxter with scarcely concealed impatience, his blue eyes passing from her to Sister Pim and thence to Alexandra. He was a handsome man, in his thirties, with a straight nose and a mobile mouth. His hair, now grizzled, must have been very fair when he was younger. Alexandra noted these things as she stepped forward; it wasn’t her department and she wasn’t in charge, but Sister Baxter was being tiresome and little Lucy Pim was, for the moment, unable to cope. She said calmly: ‘Would you prefer the Cape? The Bird’s is here if it’s only for a short time—is she very bad?’ She turned her head and spoke to Lucy, ignoring Sister Baxter’s outraged face. ‘Will you get Mr Collins? He’s on duty, I believe.’
She was competent at her work; she and the strange doctor had the Cape ventilator going by the time Mr Collins and Sister Pim arrived, and within a few minutes, after they had prepared the girl for examination, the two men set to work. Alexandra had been surprised that Mr Collins had raised no objection to the strange doctor’s obvious assumption that he should take charge of the case, it was really quite unethical, but he had murmured something with a good deal of respect when the stranger had introduced himself, so briefly and softly that she, to her annoyance, had been unable to hear a word of it. But there was no time to speculate about anyone else but the patient for the moment, for she was in a bad way.
She was young—eighteen or nineteen, perhaps, and very pretty, although the prettiness was marred now by her ashen face and blood-matted hair. A fractured base of skull, probably, and they would have to work hard to pull her round, although the ventilator was proving its worth already, virtually breathing for her until such time as she would—it was to be hoped—take over for herself once more.
The two men muttered together, making their slow, careful examination, and Alexandra, with a moment to spare, took a look around her. Sister Baxter was glowering from behind one of the emergency trolleys, later on, when everything had settled down once more there would probably be a dust-up. Alexandra tried a smile and got a lowering look in return. Lucy Pim, over the first shock of finding herself actually working the various apparatus Alexandra had been so painstakingly teaching her for the last day or so, was proving herself very useful; she would be all right, after all.
Alexandra heaved a sigh of relief and then swallowed it as her eye lighted on the seventh person in the department; a thin, angular lady, no longer young, with a sharp, pointed nose and iron grey hair drawn back into a small bun under what Alexandra could only describe to herself as a lady’s hat. Its wearer, moreover, was clad in a sensible tweed suit, and her feet were shod with equally sensible lace-up shoes. A hint of pearls at the lady’s throat and the gloves and handbag, leather but a little shabby, gave her a possible clue. Someone’s aunt; the very counterpart of aunts of her own, and probably thousands more. The girl’s? She would have to be asked presently, but in the meantime she was behaving with commendable calm and not getting in the way even though she shouldn’t be there in the first place. She caught her eye and they exchanged smiles as she handed the strange doctor an X-ray form just a second before he could open his mouth to ask for one.
Sister Pim had sped away with it, with instructions to bring back the porters with her when he turned his eyes, very cool, on Alexandra. ‘And what are you doing here?’ he wanted to know. ‘Isn’t that a St Job’s cap—’
She eyed him with a similar coolness, not liking his tone. ‘I’m here to get this unit started,’ she told him briefly. He wasn’t English; he spoke it perfectly, but there was something in his deep voice…she would find out later, meanwhile: ‘The lady by the door,’ she prompted him. ‘Is she the mother? If so, she shouldn’t be here—if you would speak to her, I’ll take her along to the waiting room.’
His smile was so unexpected that she caught her breath. ‘My aunt,’ he said, ‘Miss Euphemia Thrums, a formidable lady and of great help to me when this accident occurred. She insisted upon coming with me and I didn’t care to leave her alone.’ His voice was blandly authoritative.
‘Oh,’ said Alexandra, rather at a loss, and then: ‘Were there any relations or friends…the police…?’
‘Are already dealing with it,’ he told her smoothly. ‘The girl was driving herself—presumably there would be papers in her handbag or the car.’
It was time for Alexandra to take her observations again; she bent to her task and was just finished when the porters arrived with the portable X-ray machine, which left her with nothing much to do for a few minutes; Sister Pim was managing very nicely, so Alexandra drifted quietly back to where Sister Baxter was still standing and encountered a look from that lady which would have reduced anyone of a less sturdy nature than hers to pulp.
‘This is highly irregular,’ began Sister Baxter. ‘If anything is said, I shall hold you personally responsible.’ She nodded towards the lady by the door. ‘And who is she, I should like to know, and this man, ordering us about…’
‘He’s a doctor,’ Alexandra pointed out, ‘they do order people about when it’s necessary, you know. After all, they’re the ones who know.’
‘Yes, but who is he?’
Alexandra studied the man. He had an air of authority, but his clothes, though well cut, were a little shabby; there was nothing about him to denote the successful physician or famous surgeon. Her speculations were interrupted by the entry of the hospital’s senior anaesthetist, Doctor White, who added to the mystery by greeting the stranger as an old friend and shaking hands. What was more, he crossed the room to shake hands with Miss Thrums too, although he didn’t stop to talk to her, returning to the couch where the radiographer had done his work and was on the point of leaving. The three doctors went with him, the stranger pausing to lift a beckoning finger at Alexandra, and when she reached his side: ‘You will be good enough to remain with the patient,’ he said, ‘and let us know at once if you have reason for alarm.’ He nodded, staring at her as though he didn’t like her at all, and followed the others out.
Alexandra, checking this and that and making neat entries on the chart, ruminated with the tiny piece of her brain not occupied with her work, that her evening plans had been squashed: it was already an hour after she should have been off duty and she saw no chance of getting away for quite some time; it would have to be decided where the girl was to go, there would be delays while her relations were sent for, another hour, she reckoned before the doctors would make their decisions, and once they had, she vowed silently, she would hand over to the other two Sisters and streak off to her room and pack.
She looked up and caught Miss Thrums’ eyes on her and exclaimed with sudden contrition: ‘Oh, you poor thing—Sister Pim, do you suppose we could charm someone into giving Miss Thrums a cup of tea, she must need one after the nasty time she’s had.’
She was on the point of suggesting that she might like to go to the waiting room down the passage, too, when she remembered that the doctor had brought her with him and would probably turn nasty if she took it upon herself to send his aunt away, however kindly she meant it.
Miss Thrums smiled tiredly. ‘That would be delightful.’ She spoke in a whisper, with due regard for her surroundings, all the same she had a carrying voice. ‘What a very efficient girl you are, Sister—St Job’s, are you not? Miss Trott is a friend of mine.’ Miss Trott was the Principal Nursing Officer and rather an old duck. The doctor’s aunt went on: ‘I hope that poor girl will be all right—we were directly behind her, you know, so fortunate, because Taro was able to give help within seconds.’
She broke off as Sister Pim came back with the tea, and settled back to enjoy it as the men came back. It was Mr White who crossed the room to speak to Alexandra. ‘I believe that you are due back at St Job’s tomorrow, Sister Dobbs? We are hoping that you will co-operate with us in the plan we have decided upon. The patient has a fractured base—she’s very ill, but provided we can get specialist treatment for her within a reasonable time, I think we may hope for complete recovery. I’ve been in touch with Mr Thrush—you know him, of course, and he is willing to accept her as a patient of St Job’s. Now, would you be willing to escort her on the journey—ambulance, of course, and not immediately—possibly in a few hours’ time, by then we should get a very good idea of her condition and be reasonably certain that she can stand the journey. You will have everything laid on, needless to say.’
She liked Mr White, he was elderly and balding and kind, and reminded her of her own father. She agreed at once and he looked relieved, and when she looked across at the stranger, she saw, not relief on his handsome features, but satisfaction—so it was he who had been behind their scheme, she decided shrewdly. She asked on impulse: ‘Could I have this doctor’s name, sir? We shall need it for the report.’
She hadn’t spoken loudly, yet before Mr White could answer, the subject of her question was crossing the room to join them. ‘You agree to what we ask?’ he wanted to know, and when she nodded: ‘My name is van Dresselhuys, you will need it for your report, no doubt.’
‘Thank you. Mine’s Dobbs.’ She gave him a little nod, said ‘Excuse me,’ smiled brilliantly at Doctor White and went back to where Sister Pim was busy with the patient.
The ambulance left four hours later with Alexandra, her packing done in a swift ten minutes or so, in attendance. The stranger and his aunt had disappeared; vaguely, at the back of her busy mind, she was disappointed at this, but there really was no time to indulge in her own thoughts. She supervised the transfer of the girl to the ambulance, and collected the charts and notes from Lucy, who had volunteered to stay on duty until they went. No one had inquired about the girl; the police had drawn a blank and there was nothing in her handbag to give them any clue as to her identity; there was no driving licence there either and the car, a write-off, had borne a Midlands number-plate. Their search for her identity might take some time. Alexandra, hearing this, gave a resigned shrug and went out to the ambulance, primed with Mr White’s instructions for the journey.
There was a Morris 1000 drawn up beside it, in it sat Miss Thrums, and bending over its open, middle-aged bonnet was the strange doctor. He took no notice of Alexandra; it was his aunt who thrust her head out of the car window and said cheerfully: ‘We are accompanying you, Sister—we have to go to London in any case, and my nephew is anxious that the girl should have every care.’
Alexandra bristled. ‘Perhaps he would prefer to travel in the ambulance?’ she asked with dangerous sweetness.
The doctor answered this for himself, without bothering to take his head from under the bonnet. ‘My dear good woman, why on earth should I wish to do that when you are perfectly competent to attend to the patient? We shall travel behind you, and if you need my help you have only to signal me.’
‘Just as you wish,’ said Alexandra, still very sweet, ‘and be so good as not to address me as your good woman.’
She turned her back on his deep chuckle and flounced into the ambulance.
It was a great pity that she had to stop the ambulance twice during the journey and ask for his help; something which he gave with a calm despatch which she was forced to admit was all that she could have asked for. On the second occasion they were delayed for half an hour, working over their patient in the confines of the ambulance, with the ambulance men hovering, helpful and resourceful, at their backs, and when at last the doctor pronounced it safe to continue their journey, he added a rider to the effect that they should make the best speed they could. Luckily they were on the outskirts of Woking by now and at two o’clock in the morning the roads were fairly clear. They arrived at St Job’s without further alarms and the patient was taken at once to the Intensive Care Unit, with Alexandra, her eyes very bright in her tired face, accompanying her. She hadn’t stopped to speak to the doctor; the all-important thing was to get the girl back on to the ventilator again and she heaved a sigh of relief at being back in her own department once more with two night nurses waiting and everything to hand. The girl responded fairly quickly, and once she was sure of that Alexandra gave her report to the Night Sister, repeated it to the Registrar and yawning widely, started off for the Nurses’ Home. She hadn’t seen any more of the doctor and she didn’t expect to; probably he would see Mr Thrush’s registrar and then continue his journey.
She went sleepily down the stairs and found him at the bottom, deep in conversation with the Casualty Officer on duty, but as she reached them, he bade the young man good-bye, took her by the arm and led her through the front hall and down the main corridor, opening a door half way down it and pushing her gently inside.
‘I can’t go in here,’ Alexandra, now very much awake, pointed out, ‘this is the consultants’ room.’
‘I know, but they aren’t here at this time of night—only Aunty. The Night Super sent some coffee down for us and I promised her that I would see that you had a cup before you went to bed.’
Miss Thrums was sitting at the large table in the centre of the room, very upright and looking as though staying up all night in awkward circumstances was something she was quite accustomed to. She nodded bracingly at Alexandra, begged her to take a seat and poured her some coffee.
‘A trying evening,’ she observed. ‘I can only trust that the girl will recover.’
Alexandra murmured, because the doctor had nothing to say, and then asked: ‘Have you somewhere to go for the rest of the night? I could get Night Super to let you have the rooms we keep for relations—you could at least have rest…’
This time the doctor spoke. ‘Very kind, Sister Dobbs, but we have been offered beds at Mr Thrush’s.’ His tone implied that it really was no business of hers, and if she hadn’t been so tired, she might have felt inclined to take him up on that, instead she drank her coffee, said good-bye to Miss Thrums, and taking a brisk farewell of the doctor, started for the door to find him with her as she reached it.
‘You have been very kind,’ he told her, ‘I’m grateful. Let us hope that the patient repays you by recovering.’
‘Yes,’ said Alexandra, vague with tiredness, ‘and I hope they find her family soon, too.’ She knitted her brows, trying to think of something else to say by way of a pleasant farewell and he smiled a little. ‘You’re asleep on your feet. Goodnight, Miss Dobbs.’
It was as she was tumbling into bed that she remembered that he hadn’t said good-bye, only goodnight.
CHAPTER TWO
IT had been a very short night; Alexandra got up and dressed with the greatest reluctance and went down to join her friends at breakfast, a meal eaten in a hurry, although she still found time to answer the questions put to her.
‘And what’s this I hear,’ asked Ruth Page, Women’s Surgical Sister, ‘about you arriving in the small hours with a tall dark stranger? I met Meg coming off night duty and she was full of him—driving a Rolls, I suppose…’
‘As a matter of fact,’ said Alexandra, ‘his hair’s grizzled and he was driving a Morris 1000. Oh, and his aunt was with him.’ When the shrieks of laughter had died down, she added demurely: ‘It went like a bomb.’
‘Yes, but what about him?’ persisted Ruth. ‘What’s his name—how old is he—did he turn you on?’
Alexandra considered. ‘His name’s van Dresselhuys, that’s Dutch, isn’t it—though his English was perfect. I’ve no idea how old he would be and I thought him rather rude and bad-tempered, though,’ she added fairly, ‘he was pretty super when the girl had a cardiac arrest.’ She swallowed the last of her tea and got to her feet. ‘I’d better be on my way, I suppose; there’s a long list and if she’s fit enough they’ll want to operate, though heaven knows where they’ll fit her in.’
Several of her companions got up too and as they walked through the hospital to their various wards, someone asked: ‘This girl—who is she?’
‘That’s just it, no one knows yet. She hadn’t any papers or anything with her, the car was hired from a garage in the Midlands—Wolverhampton, I believe, and until the police can trace her family or friends she can’t be identified.’
‘It’s to be hoped that she’ll be able to tell us herself before long,’ Ruth spoke soberly. ‘I’ll get her once she’s out of the ICU, I suppose?’
‘I should think so—lord, there’s the panic bell, someone’s arresting.’ Alexandra was off down the corridor like a bullet from a gun.
It was old Mr Dasher, who had been in her unit for five days already, he had been admitted a few hours before Alexandra had gone away, and here he was still, she thought worriedly, looking not one scrap better; she got to work on him and was getting a little response when Anthony Ferris arrived. It wasn’t until the old man was once more breathing and she had spent a careful five minutes with the unconscious girl that she felt able to leave things in the hands of her staff nurse and go along to her office, so that she might go through the various papers and messages on her desk. And of course Anthony went with her, and when she sat down, sat down too, on the only other chair in the room.
Alexandra, short-tempered from lack of sleep and an unexplained dissatisfaction with life in general, frowned at him. ‘Anthony, I’ve heaps of jobs to catch up on and that girl will probably be going to theatre…’
He smiled at her with a condescending tolerance which set her splendid teeth on edge and made it worse by saying: ‘Poor little girl—I hear you had to put up with some foreign type, ordering you around. One of those know-alls, I suppose.’
‘Then you suppose wrong.’ Alexandra had forgotten the Dutchman’s arrogant manner and couldn’t spring fast enough to his defence. ‘He was extremely civil and he knew exactly what to do— I should never have got the girl here alive if it hadn’t been for him.’
Anthony was too conceited a man to be worried by her championship of someone he hadn’t even met. ‘My poor sweet,’ he said, ‘how kind of you to stick up for him…’
‘If I might echo those words?’ queried Doctor van Dresselhuys from the door.
She stared at him, her pretty mouth slightly open; she hadn’t expected him, though she had thought of him several times, and here he was, in her office, of all places. She said, inadequately: ‘Oh, hullo, I thought you’d gone.’
He leaned against the wall, dwarfing Anthony, and looking, despite his well-worn clothes, elegant. Indeed, he made the other man’s rather way-out style of dressing look rather cheap. ‘Er—no. Mr Thrush asked me if I would give the anaesthetic—he intends to do a decompression.’
His cool eyes flickered over Anthony, and Alexandra made haste to introduce the two men, but they had little to say to each other; after a few minutes Anthony announced, rather importantly, that he had work to do and edged to the door, saying over-loudly as he went: ‘I’ll see you as usual this evening, Alexandra—we might dine and dance somewhere.’ At the door he turned. ‘’Bye, darling.’
Doctor van Dresselhuys hadn’t moved, he still leant against the door, the picture of idleness, only his eyes gleamed. When Anthony had gone, he asked casually: ‘Going to marry him?’
‘No, I’m not!’ declared Alexandra explosively. Anthony had behaved like a bad-tempered child and she had given him no right at all to call her darling; he’d been showing off, of course, hoping to impress this large man, whose very largeness, she suspected, had annoyed him, and who, unless she was very much mistaken, was secretly amused.
He didn’t say anything else, just went on looking at her with his blue eyes until she felt the soft colour creeping into her cheeks. It deepened when he said softly: ‘You’re a remarkably lovely girl.’
She disliked him, she told herself seethingly, as much as she disliked Anthony—as much as she disliked men with a capital M. She pressed her lips together and lifted her chin at him, and was outraged when he asked, still casually: ‘Did I come at the wrong moment—was your young man on the point of proposing?’
‘No, he was not,’ she snapped, ‘and even if he were,’ she went on crossly, ‘I really don’t see that it’s any business of yours.’ She got up. ‘And you really must excuse me, I have work to do.’
‘Ah, yes. I’ve come to see the patient, if you would be so kind?’ He stood aside to let her pass and followed her into the unit, where he became all at once a doctor, asking questions in a calm voice, reading the notes, examining the girl with meticulous care. There was no hidden amusement now; he was absorbed in what he was doing, and Alexandra was no longer a lovely girl; she was a skilled someone in a white gown, who answered his questions with the intelligence expected of her. Finally he nodded, thanked her and went away; she didn’t see him again for quite some time, but when the theatre nurse came to escort the girl to theatre, she was treated to that young lady’s ecstatic opinion of him; he had, it seemed, charmed every female he had encountered. Alexandra was left with the feeling that she must be lacking in something or other.
The girl came back, holding her own well, and as far as was possible to judge at this stage, the operation had been a success. Alexandra set to work on her, and when Doctor van Dresselhuys came to see the patient in Mr Thrush’s company, she was far too occupied to spare a thought for him.
Late off duty, because she had been a little anxious about her patient, Alexandra took the lift down to ground level, nipped smartly along a succession of passages and crossed the small ornamental garden which separated the Nurses’ Home from the hospital. It was pitch dark by now and there was no reason why she should encounter anyone at that hour, so that the vague feeling of disappointment she experienced was all the more surprising. In her room, she kicked off her shoes, removed her cap and went along to run a bath; she met Ruth on the way back and delayed to share a pot of tea with her. Anthony had said that he would meet her, but he hadn’t said when or where; his airy remark about meeting her as usual meant nothing; they had gone out fairly frequently together, it was true, but he had implied that they went dining and dancing nightly. Frowningly, she could only remember two occasions in the last three months or so when he had taken her somewhere really decent for dinner, and never to a dance.
She accepted a second cup; let Anthony wait, better still, let him telephone over to the home and ask if she was ready.
She had bathed and was in her dressing gown doing her hair when someone shouted up the stairs that she was wanted on the telephone. She went without haste and said a grumpy ‘Well?’ into the receiver.
‘Good lord,’ Anthony’s voice sounded irritable. ‘What’s keeping you? You’ve been off duty for an hour or more.’
‘So I have, but not knowing where I was to meet you as usual or to which marvellous place you were taking me to dine and dance, there didn’t seem much point in doing anything about it.’
She heard his embarrassed laugh. ‘Look here, old girl, you must have known I only said that because that nonchalant type was standing there laughing at me. Come on now,’ his voice took on a wheedling note, ‘throw on a coat and we’ll go out and have a meal.’
She hesitated; she had missed her supper and all she had in her room was a tin of biscuits. She said, ‘All right,’ and added, ‘I think you were very silly,’ before she put down the receiver.
He was waiting for her at the hospital entrance when she got there, ten minutes later. Because it was such a dark and damp evening, she had put on a raincoat, belted round her slim waist, and dragged on a wool cap, shrouding her dark hair, then added a matching scarf, yards long, which she wound round her neck to keep out the cold; totally unglamorous, she decided, taking a quick look at herself, but sensible.
It was a nasty quirk of fate that Doctor van Dresselhuys should have been standing in the entrance hall, talking to Mr Thrush. He looked up as she went past them, his brows arching slowly as he took deliberate stock of her, while his mouth curved into a smile, conveying plainly that her appearance hardly tallied with that of a young woman on her way to dine and dance. She scowled at him, smiled sweetly at Mr Thrush, and joined Anthony, giving him a look which caused him to say: ‘You look like one of the Furies!’
She didn’t answer him at once; she was still smarting under Doctor van Dresselhuys’ amused, faintly mocking look, but as they went down the steps she asked: ‘Where are we going?’
‘How about that little Italian place? It’s not too far to walk and it’s cheap.’
He took her arm as he spoke, in much the same way, she thought resentfully, as a man might slip a collar on his dog. She freed her arm, and he muttered: ‘Huh—in a bad mood, are you?’ an unfair remark which hardly served to increase her good humour, so that they went down the street mentally as well as physically apart.
They patched up their differences during the evening. Anthony, with his hasty apology a little carelessly offered, plunged into a tale of how he had got the better of old Sister Tucker on Women’s Medical, which, seeing that that lady was a byword in the hospital for her short temper and cursory treatment of all doctors below the rank of consultant, should have made Alexandra laugh. She did indeed smile, but it struck her that Anthony had been a bit mean with the old tartar. After all, she had been at St Job’s for more than thirty years and was the best nurse the hospital had ever had; she was due to retire soon, and most people, while grumbling at her fierce tongue, secretly liked her, taking her tellings-off in good part. It was disquieting to discover that Anthony wasn’t quite as nice as she had thought him to be and this feeling was heightened by the fact that she was tired and a little depressed and he had insisted on their walking back, because, as he explained, the exercise was good for them both. She wondered secretly if he grudged the price of a taxi, but later, in bed and thinking about it, she came to the conclusion that she had done him less than justice; he had his way to make, like anyone else, and probably he would end up very comfortably off because he hadn’t wasted his money. She reminded herself that he was all that a girl could wish for—well, almost all, and closed her eyes. She was almost asleep when she realized that she wasn’t thinking about Anthony at all but of that beastly Doctor van Dresselhuys.
She saw him the next morning. He arrived with Mr Thrush, checked the patient’s progress, offered one or two suggestions in a diffident manner, and then blandly accepted her rather cold invitation to have coffee in her office. Once there, neither Mr Thrush nor he seemed disposed to leave—indeed, after ten minutes, Alexandra excused herself on the plea of work to do, and left them with the coffee pot between them, deep in a learned discussion concerning the pre-central gyrus of the brain.
She thought it highly likely that neither gentleman, although both had risen politely to their feet as she left them, had really noticed her going or heard a word of what she had said.
She had no occasion to go to her office for quite some time after that, but when she did she was surprised to find the Dutchman still there, at her desk now, writing busily. He looked up as she went in and said coolly: ‘Forgive me if I don’t get up—these are a few calculations and notes which must be written up immediately.’
The papers she wanted were in the desk; she edged past him and knelt down the better to reach the bottom drawer at one side of it, aware that he had stopped writing.
‘Have you made it up?’ he wanted to know.
She lifted her head and found his face bending over her, only a few inches away. ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she said indignantly.
‘Don’t behave like a schoolgirl,’ he begged her, ‘you know very well what I mean. You looked like a thunder-cloud yesterday evening, and don’t try and tell me that you went dining and dancing in that elderly raincoat—besides, you walked down the street as though you hated—er—whatever his name is. You have a very eloquent back.’
‘It’s none of your business,’ she told him hotly. ‘Really…’
‘Now, that is unkind; I like to see other people happy.’ His voice held a mocking note. ‘And you are not. I’ll wager my day’s fees that he walked you back.’
‘It’s healthy exercise,’ she declared, too quickly, ‘and he hasn’t got a car yet—not even a Morris 1000,’ she added nastily.
He ignored this piece of rudeness. ‘A nice little car,’ he observed smoothly, ‘reliable, cheap to run and not too fast.’
She was diverted enough to exclaim: ‘It doesn’t look your sort of car at all,’ and then remembered to add: ‘Not that I am in the least interested in what you drive.’
He was staring at her. ‘If I were to ask you out to dinner with me, would you come?’
‘No.’ The word had popped out before she had quenched the thought that she would like to, very much.
‘I thought perhaps you wouldn’t. Ah, well, I have survived worse disappointments. And now, young woman, if you have finished kneeling at my feet, perhaps I might continue to borrow your office for another ten minutes or so.’
She closed the drawer deliberately, clutching the papers she had sought; there was a great deal she would have liked to have said, but she thought that, on the whole, it might be better to hold her tongue, so she edged past him again and flounced out in such a bad temper that her staff nurse wanted to know if she felt ill.
She didn’t see him for the rest of the day, so that by the evening she believed him gone, which was a pity because she still hadn’t discovered just who he was. A good friend of Mr Thrush, that was obvious—perhaps he had a practice in England even though he was a Dutchman; that, combined with the fact that he had been at the scene of the accident, would be enough to make him take an interest in the patient.
No one had come forward to claim the girl; police inquiries, photos in the newspapers, none of these had had any results. Alexandra, hopeful of her patient’s recovery, wished that she could regain consciousness, so that they could discover her name, but at the end of another two days she was still unconscious, so that Alexandra, with two days off to take, was in two minds not to take them. But common sense prevailed; she needed a break, if only to get away from Anthony, so that she could make up her mind about him. She went off duty that evening and caught the train to Dorchester by the skin of her teeth, and instead of having a quiet think as she had intended, went to sleep, only waking as the train drew in at her destination.
Jim, her younger brother, was waiting for her, still in his anorak and gumboots because he had come straight from the farm where he was finishing the last few months of his course at the Agricultural College. He greeted her with off-handed affection, caught up her case as though it had been a paper bag and led the way to where the Land Rover he had borrowed was waiting.
‘Nice of you to pick me up,’ said Alexandra, disposing her person as comfortably as possible. ‘Is Father busy?’
‘Up to his eyes—’flu.’ He started the engine. ‘You’re OK?’
‘Yes, thanks. How’s work?’
She sat listening to him talking about his job as he drove them at a great rate away from the town, through Cerne Abbas and then beyond, turning presently into a country road leading to the village where her father had his vast rural practice. The lights were shining a welcome as he brought the Land Rover to a squealing halt before her home; a rambling, thatched house of no great size but lacking nothing of picturesque architecture.
She ran inside, glad to be home, to find her mother in the kitchen getting her supper. Mrs Dobbs was like her daughter—indeed, her husband always declared that she had been twice as pretty as her daughter when she had been younger. Even now she was still a comely woman, who hugged her daughter with real delight and advised her to go and see her father in his study while she dished up.
Doctor Dobbs was catching up on his book work, but he cast this aside as Alexandra went in, declaring that she was a sight for sore eyes, and just in time to add up his accounts for him, something she did quickly before carrying him off to the dining-room while she ate her supper.
Her parents sat at the table with her, not eating, but plying her with food and questions and answering her own questions in their turn, and presently Jim, finished for the day, joined them and then Jeff, studying to be a vet in Bristol and home for a week’s leave. Only her eldest brother, Edmund, was absent; qualified a year ago, he was now a partner in his father’s practice with a surgery in a neighbouring village where he lived with his wife and baby daughter.
Alexandra beamed round at them all. ‘It’s super to be home,’ she declared. ‘Every time I come, I swear I’ll give up nursing.’
There was a general laugh, although Mrs Dobbs looked hopeful. She was too clever to say anything, though, but instead inquired about the girl Alexandra had been looking after. ‘The local papers have had a lot to say about it,’ she told her daughter, ‘how strange it is that no one has come forward. And who is this doctor who saw the accident? There was a lot about him too, but no facts, if you know what I mean.’
‘I don’t know much about him, either,’ said Alexandra. ‘He—he just came in with her, you know, and when we went up to St Job’s, he came too.’
‘In the ambulance?’
‘No—his car. A Morris 1000.’
Even her father looked up then. ‘He can’t be doing very well,’ he observed. ‘It’s a nice enough car, but more suitable to elderly ladies and retired gents than to a doctor. Is he elderly?’
She shook her head. ‘No—forty or thereabouts, I suppose. Perhaps younger—it’s hard to tell.’
‘Good-looking?’ Her mother had been dying to ask that.
‘Well, yes—I really didn’t notice.’
It was the kind of answer to make Mrs Dobbs dart a sharp glance at her daughter and change the subject. ‘How is Anthony?’ she wanted to know.
Alexandra’s high forehead creased into a frown. ‘Oh, all right—busy, you know.’ She yawned and her mother said at once: ‘You’re tired, dear—bed for you. Is there anything you want to do tomorrow?’
Alexandra shook her head. ‘No, Mother dear. I’ll drive Father on his rounds if he’d like me to, it’s a nice way of seeing the country.’
Two days of home did her a world of good; she hated going back; she always did, but there would be more days off and in the meantime work didn’t seem as bad as it had done. And indeed, it wasn’t; the unit had filled up, and filled up still further that morning, even though temporarily, with a case from theatre which had collapsed in the recovery room. It was late afternoon by the time the man was well enough to send back to his ward, and Alexandra was already late off duty, but before she went she paid one more visit to the girl. She was doing well now; another day and she would be sent down to the Women’s Surgical ward. It was a pity that she hadn’t regained consciousness, though. Alexandra bent over the quiet face and checked a breath as the girl opened her eyes.
‘Hullo,’ said Alexandra, and smiled reassuringly. ‘Don’t worry, you’re in hospital. You had an accident, but you’re getting better.’
The blue eyes held intelligence. ‘My head aches.’
‘I’m afraid it may do for a little while, but you’ll be given something for it. My dear, what is your name?’
The girl looked at her for a long moment. ‘I can’t remember,’ she spoke in a thin whisper, ‘I can’t remember anything.’
‘Not to worry,’ said Alexandra comfortably, ‘it will all come back presently.’ She pressed the bell beside the bed, and when a nurse came, not quite running, asked her to let the Surgical Registrar know that Mr Thrush’s patient was conscious and would he come as soon as he could.
He came at once, and a few moments later, Mr Thrush with Doctor van Dresselhuys. Alexandra went to meet them and the surgeon said in tones of satisfaction: ‘This is splendid, Sister, and how fortunate that Doctor van Dresselhuys should have been here with me. And now, before we see the patient, give me your observations, Sister.’
Which she did, very concisely, before going with them to the bedside.
The girl had fallen asleep with all the suddenness of a child. Alexandra counted her pulse. ‘Almost normal and much stronger. How pretty she is with all that golden hair.’ She smiled at the two men. ‘Like a bright penny.’
Mr Thrush nodded, but it was the Dutchman who said quietly: ‘She has no name, has she, not until she remembers… What you just said, Sister, about a bright penny. Could we not call her Penny Bright?’
He too was looking down at the girl, and for no reason at all, Alexandra suffered a pang at the expression on his face. It was ridiculous to mind; why, they didn’t even like each other, and having rescued the girl like that must have caused him to feel something towards her. ‘It’s a marvellous idea,’ she agreed at once. ‘It will worry her dreadfully if we don’t call her something, and she might be like this for some time, mightn’t she?’
‘One can never tell with retrograde amnesia,’ said Mr Thrush. ‘A month, perhaps longer, who knows. You’ll do all in your power, I know, Sister.’ He moved to the other side of the bed. ‘I think I’ll just go over her reflexes.’
Alexandra, off duty at last—for even after the men had gone, she had to add everything to her report—went first to the hospital entrance. Anthony had asked her to meet him there at six o’clock, and it was already half past that hour and she was still in uniform. He was there all right, walking up and down and looking impatiently at his watch every few seconds, and when she reached him and began to explain why she was late, he hardly listened, nor did he give her a chance to finish what she was saying.
‘I must say,’ he began furiously, ‘that you have no thought for my convenience at all—here have I been waiting for the last forty minutes—the least you could have done would have been to send a message. And I can’t for the life of me see why you needed to stay; the girl won’t die if you leave her to someone else,’ he pointed out nastily.
Alexandra sighed. She was tired and it would have been nice if she could have told him about the girl regaining consciousness and how pleased everyone was; she repressed the thought that when Anthony had been late on more than one occasion she had been expected to wait for him uncomplainingly and then listen to his weighty explanations afterwards. But he was tired too, she mustn’t forget that, so she said now in a reasonable voice, ‘Oh, I know that, but it helped Mr Thrush if I stayed on for a bit, because I was there when she became conscious and he wanted to know exactly what had happened. You see, she’s got a retrograde amnesia—she can’t remember anything, not even her name. We’re going to call her Penny Bright.’
His lip curled. ‘I suppose you wasted more time thinking that one up?’
She answered without thinking. ‘As a matter of fact, I didn’t, it was Doctor van Dresselhuys.’
‘Now I know why you’re late—hanging around after that Dutchman. I’ve seen you staring at him.’
She was cold with rage, but she kept her voice reasonably still. ‘That’s a silly thing to say; we don’t even like each other, but you know as well as I do that you can work quite well with someone, even if you don’t get on well. And I don’t look at him.’
They were standing at the door, and people going in and out looked curiously at them. There was a fearful draught too and she shivered. ‘Look, shall I go and change?’
She really had no wish to go out now, her evening had been spoilt and Anthony was in a vile mood, and so, she had to admit, was she.
‘Don’t bother,’ he told her with a nasty little sneer. ‘Why not go back to that fellow… I must say, Alexandra, that your behaviour is hardly what one would expect of a doctor’s wife.’
That really was the last straw, the reasonableness exploded into healthy rage. ‘Whose wife?’ she demanded. ‘I wasn’t aware that I had made any plans to be a doctor’s wife, and even if I had, I haven’t any more,’ she went on rapidly, getting a little mixed by reason of her strong feeling, ‘and how dare you talk to me about my behaviour—the utter gall…’ she choked on her temper, turned on her heel and crossed the hall, straight into the solid seventeen or eighteen stones of Doctor van Dresselhuys.
He caught her by the shoulders and set her back on her feet and then with his hands still there, said softly: ‘Oh, dear, what a nasty habit I have of intruding into your love life!’
‘It’s not my love life,’ she muttered in a fine rage. ‘I haven’t got one, and I wish you wouldn’t keep…’ She stopped and sniffed, aware that at any moment she was going to burst into tears. ‘If you would let go of me,’ she besought him, and when he did, tore off through the hospital until she reached the haven of her room. A hearty burst of tears relieved her feelings enormously, and thankful that there was no one else off duty, she went along to make a pot of tea and then, very much refreshed, had a bath. By the time her friends came off duty after supper, she looked very much as usual and was able to join in their talk as though she hadn’t a care in the world. It was only after all the various doors had closed and it was quiet and dark that she got out her writing case and found a pen.
Miss Trott showed considerable astonishment when Alexandra, her written resignation in her hand, presented herself in the office the following morning. She heard her rather feeble reasons for leaving without comment and only when she had finished did she remark: ‘This is a great surprise to me, Sister Dobbs, I had come to regard you as one of my more permanent senior nurses. Naturally, I had expected that you might leave in order to get married…’ She paused expectantly, but Alexandra had nothing to say to that, and she frowned slightly, thwarted out of the speech she had intended to make so that Alexandra might be persuaded to change her mind. She sighed. ‘Who is to take your place?’
‘Well, Staff Nurse Thorne is very good, Miss Trott, she’s been my right hand for more than two years, she would be perfectly capable of taking over the unit, and everyone likes her.’
‘You are determined to leave, Sister Dobbs?’
‘Yes, quite determined, Miss Trott.’
‘And not, I fancy, entirely for the reasons which you have given me?’
‘No, Miss Trott.’
‘Well, in that case I must accept your resignation, although with the greatest reluctance. And I will consider Staff Nurse Thorne for the post.’ She smiled faintly in dismissal. Alexandra was one of her favourites, although she was careful not to show partiality for any one of her staff. That she was labouring under strong feelings was obvious to Miss Trott’s experienced eye, trained to notice such things. Equally obvious was the fact that she was to be told nothing but a string of flimsy reasons as to why she wished to leave. She sighed and pulled a sheaf of papers towards her, aware of a number of half buried, wistful thoughts.
Alexandra’s thoughts were neither wistful nor half buried; they were angry and a little frightened; she had burnt her boats behind her for the silliest of reasons and on an impulse. She had surely made it clear to Anthony that she didn’t wish to marry him; they could have continued to be friends and he would have found another girl, more amenable than she so that she could have stayed on in the unit and everything would have been settled in a nice, civilized fashion, but upon reflection, it wouldn’t have done at all. Anthony wasn’t the kind of man to accept her as a friend once all idea of marriage between them had been scotched and meeting him each day would have been embarrassing to them both. Not only that, she reminded herself, he had been unreasonably ill-tempered, shouting at her and making snide remarks about Doctor van Dresselhuys. Not that she had any sympathy with that gentleman, always poking his large arrogant nose into her affairs.
With difficulty she brought her mind back to her own problems; she had a month in which to find another job—time enough, indeed, a few weeks at home while she looked around might be a good thing—just what she needed to cure the vague restlessness she had felt for the last few days.
She quickened her footsteps, back to the ICU, confident that she had her future well in hand.
CHAPTER THREE
IT was the second week of November, which meant that Alexandra would be free to leave well before Christmas, a sound reason to postpone the finding of a job until after the festive season. And indeed, during the ensuing weeks, she found herself singularly loath to set about serious job-hunting; she had made several tentative inquiries and met with encouraging replies, but she found herself unable to make up her mind about any of them, something which puzzled her just as much as it puzzled her family and friends. In the end she concluded that it was because she didn’t want to leave Penny Bright; the girl was making excellent progress now, down in Women’s Surgical, and each day she became prettier, only her memory, for the moment at least, had gone, and without relations or friends to stimulate it, it was proving a difficult task to break down the barrier her accident had caused. Mr Thrush was of the opinion that it would return, given time and patience, in the meantime he was satisfied with her progress. Alexandra went to visit her each day, usually as she was going off duty in the early evening, and it was on one of these occasions, two weeks or more after she had decided to leave, that Penny surprised her by saying: ‘Doctor van Dresselhuys says that I am almost well. I shall be glad to leave here, though everyone has been very nice to me.’
Alexandra smiled. ‘Well, of course, why shouldn’t they be?’ and could not prevent herself from asking: ‘Does he come often, the doctor?’
Penny answered readily. ‘Oh, yes, every week. He brings me books and magazines now that I may read a little and he shows me pictures of places and asks me if I know them. Sometimes he’s stern, though, and says I must do as I’m told…’
‘Why does he say that?’
‘Well, sometimes I don’t do as Sister tells me and then I get giddy—I shan’t be giddy for always, shall I?’
‘No, of course not, Penny, but you gave your head a nasty bang, you know, and it’ll take a little time to get quite well.’
She gave the girl sitting so docilely in the chair a motherly look. What a charming creature she was; no wonder the housemen made a beeline for her the moment they came into the ward, and so, apparently, did Doctor van Dresselhuys. She frowned, annoyed at having thought about him at all; she had dismissed him to the back of her mind days ago—she had tried to dismiss him altogether, but he had refused to go—and now, with just one remark from Penny, here he was again, every line of his handsome, aloof face well remembered, every note of his deep voice ringing in her ears.
She found herself wondering if she would encounter him on one of his visits, but either he had just gone or was expected shortly; he was never there when she was. After a few days she came to the conclusion that he didn’t want to meet her again.
She was finding the month hard to get through; she and Anthony couldn’t avoid meeting each other, and although she kept up a semblance of friendliness towards him, he chose to ignore this, behaving as though his feelings were much injured, and taking care to let everyone see it. She found herself longing to be gone even though her plans for the future were still vague. Even the news that Penny was considered well enough to leave hospital, while delighting her, did nothing to spur her on to the tiresome task of finding another job, let alone make up her mind where she wanted to go.
A decision which, as it turned out, she didn’t have to make, for the very next day, a few minutes after she had gained her room after her day’s duty, the floor telephone shrilled, bidding her go all the way downstairs again because Doctor van Dresselhuys would like a word with her.
Not in the best of tempers at this infringement of her free time, she dug her feet back into her shoes, put back the cap she had just taken off her rather untidy head, and trailed down four flights of stairs, to find him pacing impatiently to and fro in the hall.
The moment he saw her, however, he stopped his perambulations and came towards her, reaching the bottom step at the same time as she did, so that she found her eyes almost on a level with his. They stared at each other silently until she asked in a nettled tone: ‘You wanted to see me, Doctor van Dresselhuys?’
‘Yes. Penny is leaving the hospital in two days’ time, of course you know that.’ His voice was almost curt. ‘I understand that you are also leaving and have no immediate plans for the future. Penny has nowhere to go and until such time as she regains her memory, or her family come forward to claim her, my aunt has offered to give her a home. It is, of course, out of the question that she should do this without help. It would oblige me—us, if you would accompany her as a companion—nurse, whatever you like to call yourself, until her future is assured—at a not too distant date, I hope. We would naturally pay you your present salary.’
Alexandra opened her mouth and closed it again. She had been very much surprised at his offer, and now she was still more surprised to find that her instinctive response had been to say yes without even bothering to think it over. But she was a level-headed girl, not liking to be rushed into anything, so she thought about it for a few minutes, then: ‘That would be a great deal too much money,’ she observed. ‘Looking after one girl is hardly the same as running a big unit.’
He disregarded this. ‘You’ll come?’ His cool assumption that she would come piqued her. ‘I was going home for Christmas…’
‘Would you have gone if you had remained at St Job’s?’
Honesty compelled her to say that she wouldn’t, even though it annoyed her very much to have to confess it. He nodded in a satisfied way, which annoyed her even more. ‘Then I can take it as settled?’
‘No, you can’t,’ she snapped. ‘Do you always bulldoze your own way over other people? You’ve told me nothing; merely asked me to take a job. I don’t even know where your aunt lives.’
He smiled at her with a sudden charm which took her breath.
‘I’ve annoyed you, I’m sorry. I’ve been careless of your feelings and quite thoughtless; that is because I have been considering this plan for the last few days and I very much want you to take the job. You see, Penny is fond of you, and you have helped her a good deal even though she hasn’t been in your care for the last couple of weeks. You are a sensible woman and resourceful too, and I think—so does Mr Thrush—that if anyone can help Penny to overcome her amnesia, you are that one. Besides, Aunt Euphemia likes you.’
He paused and turned away to stare out of the small window, although there was nothing to see in the outside dark. ‘And you are quite right, I have told you nothing. My aunt has a small house—a cottage—in Suffolk. Rather remote, I should warn you, the nearest town of any size is Needham Market, and that’s no size at all. The cottage is a mile from the nearest village, Denningham. Do you drive?’
‘Yes.’
‘Ah, well, there will be no problem there, and little or nothing for you to do other than keep Penny under your eye, look to her health and try constantly, without her being too aware of it, to coax back her memory, even her name would help. We have decided to wait another two or three weeks, and if there are no developments during that time, then we shall have to do some more thinking. It is extraordinary that none of her family or friends have come forward; she may of course be in the unhappy position of having neither, but I hardly think that is the case.’ He gave her a direct look. ‘Would you mind very much about Christmas?’
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