Victory For Victoria Read online

  She was dressed and waiting in her room when Matron came to see her.

  ‘Ready for Mrs Johnson, Staff Nurse?’ she enquired. ‘I’m glad to find that you have made such an excellent recovery. I am very sorry indeed that this has happened, and I hope a week’s sick leave will put you back on your feet,’ she paused and added with some delicacy, ‘I hope too, that this unpleasant experience has not given you a distaste for nursing. You have a most promising future, most promising, and I should be sorry to see it jeopardised in any way.’

  Victoria murmured suitably. Matron was a nice woman, but she spoke as if there was no other future for Victoria outside nursing. She was on the point of mentioning that her future wasn’t quite decided, but something stopped her; after all, Alexander might call her his darling, but there was nothing out of the ordinary in that nowadays. It was perfectly possible to be a man’s darling until he met another girl who would be slightly more darling. She listened to Matron’s kindly remarks and answered pleasantly when it was necessary, and was relieved when the Home maid came to tell her that Mrs Johnson was downstairs.

  Mrs Johnson drove her own car, an elderly Austin Ten, almost a museum piece, but in perfect working order, which in itself was an astonishing thing, for Mrs Johnson was by no means a careful driver. They journeyed to Pimlico in a series of little rushes, sudden applications of the brake and a terrible grinding of gears, none of which seemed to worry the Austin’s owner in the least, and Victoria, who had driven with her hostess before, knew better than to comment upon their eccentric progress. All the same, she was relieved when they reached the house and Martha came to open the door and hug her to an accompaniment of Well, I nevers—the villain—look at your poor neck! and suchlike consoling remarks. Victoria was drawn into the small house’s comfort, made to sit in a chair in the sitting room and plied with tea, and because Martha had baked an assortment of cakes especially for her, she made a good meal, despite her sore throat.

  After tea Mrs Johnson insisted upon her staying where she was. ‘Martha will unpack your case,’ she said comfortably. ‘I’m so glad to have you here, child. A few days’ rest and quiet will do you a world of good—it must have been a shocking experience.’

  ‘Yes, it was. I—I was terrified. I couldn’t believe my ears when Alexander…’

  Mrs Johnson gave her a keen glance. ‘A resourceful young man, I fancy, Victoria, and very dependable. I like what I saw of him, so did your Uncle Gardener.’

  High praise indeed, thought Victoria. Anyone finding favour in her brother’s sight was sure to be accepted by his sister without question. She asked: ‘Did you have a long talk with Alexander?’

  ‘No,’ said Mrs Johnson, ‘at the most ten minutes, but I took an instant liking to him. He’s back in Holland, I gather?’

  Victoria stared fixedly at her shoes, thinking what a long way away Holland was. ‘Yes,’ she said at length, unable to think of anything else to say.

  ‘A busy man, no doubt,’ remarked Mrs Johnson briskly, and changed the subject abruptly. ‘Your mother was very well when I telephoned her this morning, although she is still a little anxious about you—I thought that maybe you might like to telephone her this evening.’

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Johnson.’ Victoria was grateful for the kindly thought. ‘Alexander rang her up twice and I did too, but it was a bit difficult not being able to speak loudly enough.’ She got up and wandered over to the glass door leading on to the garden. ‘May I go out and look round? It looks lovely; you and Uncle Gardener are both clever with flowers, aren’t you?’

  Her hostess joined her, and they stood on the minute lawn, rotating slowly, studying the flower beds which bordered it. Mrs Johnson said unexpectedly: ‘He’ll be back soon, child,’ and patted Victoria’s arm, and Victoria, who hadn’t expected it and was taken unawares, asked like a child who needed to be reassured: ‘Oh, do you really think so?’

  ‘Depend upon it,’ said Mrs Johnson. ‘Come inside, I want to show you my petit-point—I’ve almost finished it.’

  The evening passed pleasantly and Victoria went early to bed in the small second-floor room at the back of the house. It was furnished with nice early Victoria bits and pieces and the curtains and bedspread were of sprigged chintz. Victoria, sitting up in bed, leafing through a copy of Country Life thoughtfully provided for her, sighed with pleasure. Really, the prospect of a few days in the charming little house with her two friends was very satisfying. ‘I’m very lucky,’ she told herself aloud, because it sounded more convincing like that and might serve to stifle the thought that it would be even nicer if Alexander were to come again soon. But she was beginning to learn that it was silly to speculate where he was concerned. She thumped her pillows rather peevishly. Probably at this very moment he was having a heavenly time with some gorgeous creature. After all, he might have rescued her in the most romantic fashion from her berserk patient, but anyone would have done the same. She reminded herself that he had called her his darling, and on this thought, went to sleep.

  The days passed quietly. She accompanied her hostess shopping, mostly to Harrods, because Mrs Johnson had had an account there when she had first married and come to live in London, and had never seen a reason for discontinuing it. Victoria prowled around its fashion departments while Mrs Johnson, downstairs in the food section, pored over her weekly grocery list before joining her for coffee and then accompanying her to whichever department her fancy dictated. It was on their third visit to the store that Victoria discovered the bridal department and spent a delightful twenty minutes or so studying its display. ‘Shall you wear white?’ Mrs Johnson wanted to know, out of the blue.

  Victoria put down a delicate coronet of orange blossom she had been examining; she could feel her cheeks grow hot under her companion’s eyes, but she met them squarely enough. ‘There’s nothing like that,’ she said carefully, ‘really there isn’t.’ She looked almost pleadingly at her hostess. ‘You see, nowadays it’s—it’s different…’

  ‘I move with the times,’ Mrs Johnson stated positively, ‘but neither you nor this doctor of yours are what I would describe as permissive—have I the word right? I imagine it will be orange blossom and white satin once the pair of you can make up your minds.’

  ‘No—yes, I don’t know.’ Victoria was conscious that she was putting up a poor show. She had always prided herself on being modern and sensible and just a little bit tough, and here she was behaving like a silly simpering creature in ringlets and a crinoline. ‘Look,’ she said, trying again, ‘we haven’t got as far as—as—well, we’re friends, that’s all.’

  ‘Huh,’ said her companion, ‘that’s not what your Uncle Gardener thinks.’

  Victoria was appalled. ‘He hasn’t said anything,’ she began. ‘It’s really no one’s business,’ she went on with some spirit.

  ‘No, dear, I agree,’ Mrs Johnson smiled at her kindly. ‘And now I must go back to the food department. I quite forgot to order the ground almonds—Martha will never forgive me.’ She said over her shoulder as she went: ‘Shall we walk back home? It’s such a lovely day.’

  It was on Saturday morning, after breakfast, when Victoria chanced to look out of the sitting-room window to see the Mercedes draw up without sound before the door. The next instant she was on her way up to her room, her long slender legs making light work of the stairs. Once before her dressing-table mirror she began feverishly to put up her hair. ‘How like him,’ she muttered indistinctly through the pins she was holding between her teeth, ‘to come at a moment’s notice—and it would be on the very morning when I hadn’t bothered to do my hair!’

  She skewered the last of the fiery mass firmly to her head and began on the delicate task of applying lipstick. She hadn’t quite finished when Martha’s voice from the landing below besought her to go downstairs without loss of time. Even then, although her heart was pounding against her ribs in a most exciting fashion, she managed not to hurry—indeed, she paused long enough to spray her person with Dioressen
ce before walking without haste out of her room and down the two flights of stairs to the sitting room. Alexander was standing at the garden end, viewing the flower beds with Mrs Johnson, but as Victoria went in he turned his head to look at her.

  ‘And what possessed you to turn tail and run the moment you saw me?’ he demanded flatly.

  She halted by the door, her mouth a little agape because she hadn’t expected that sort of greeting at all. Anyone else would at least have enquired about her bruises—it just showed how little interest he had in her, she told herself crossly, choosing to ignore the fact that he had made a considerable journey… Perhaps he hadn’t, perhaps he had been in London…

  She said snappishly, longing to be able to put her muddled thoughts into words and not having the time to do so: ‘I didn’t expect you.’

  ‘No? But why bother to rush away and do your hair when you know that I like it hanging down your back?’

  Her fine eyes flashed. ‘I’m not in the habit of wearing my hair so just—just to please you!’

  His face was bland. ‘Neither are you,’ he conceded silkily. ‘As far as I remember it has usually been force of circumstances.’ He smiled wickedly at her and Mrs Johnson said hastily: ‘Well, you two will have plenty to tell each other, I’ve no doubt, and I must go to the kitchen and speak to Martha.’

  ‘I’ll go for you,’ volunteered Victoria perversely even while she knew that to go out of the room, away from Alexander, even for a few minutes, would be agony. Mrs Johnson, luckily, took no notice of this silly remark, but went briskly to the door which the doctor was already holding open for her with a readiness not lost upon her. She gave him a bright glance as she passed him which he returned before shutting the door with quiet firmness behind her and turning to Victoria.

  ‘Now, darling girl, why have you a bee in your bonnet? I thought you might be a little pleased to see me—and what do I find when I arrive? Without breakfast too—a cross-patch who turns and runs at first sight of me.’

  Victoria’s scowl changed all at once to motherly concern. ‘No breakfast—oh, Alexander why didn’t you say so! I thought—I didn’t know if you’d come from Holland…’

  He took a step or so nearer to her. ‘Ah—the bee! I’ve been lurking in London all the week, ignoring you and that after saying I was going home. Worse, I have naturally been out every night with a succession of beautiful young women.’ His smile held faint mockery as well as tenderness. ‘Dear girl, I see that we have a long way to go yet.’

  She didn’t pretend not to understand, but it was the sort of awkward remark he was prone to make and which she was never sure how to answer. She gulped back what her over-ready tongue longed to say. ‘I’ll ask Martha to cook you some breakfast, you must be famished.’ This sensible remark met with no answer and the decided twinkle in his eyes set her truant tongue off once more. ‘Why did you come?’

  ‘To see you, dear girl—to look at your bruises and find out how you are—and for this.’

  Victoria felt herself whisked across the couple of feet which separated them and held fast in his arms. He was still smiling a little as he kissed her. It was a most satisfactory kiss, not at all like the featherlight salute he had given her in Sick Bay. It was, in fact, so satisfactory that he repeated it several times and each time she returned it happily. When at last they drew apart, she said, breathless:

  ‘Alexander, oh, Alexander!’ and then making a great effort to be sensible again: ‘Your breakfast—I’ll ask Martha.’ She made for the door, but he put out a hand to hold her gently and turn her to face him again. ‘Those bruises—they’re all right? And your arms?’ He examined them as he spoke, his face once more calm and impassive, so that he looked quite different from the man who had kissed her. He drew the scarf from her throat and examined that too and when he had finished, kissed her cheek, a light friendly kiss this time. ‘Cured,’ he pronounced. ‘Fit enough to keep a dinner date.’

  ‘Oh, but I can’t—I still have to wear a scarf and if I go out—you know, where there are people, I have to have long sleeves.’

  ‘That’s easily solved. We’ll go into the country and find somewhere small and remote, and if the landlord glowers at me for being a brutal husband who beats his wife, you’ll have to smooth him down.’

  She laughed because she was so happy she would have laughed at anything. ‘You’re absurd! Come along to the kitchen.’

  Martha was already busy at the stove. ‘You’ll have had no breakfast, I’ll be bound,’ she stated cosily, ‘and even if you did, it would have been very early.’

  Alexander, invited to seat himself at the table, made an excellent meal, quite unabashed by the three women sitting round him and carrying on a lively argument with Mrs Johnson, who couldn’t think why he didn’t fly more often. It was all of an hour later when she asked him:

  ‘Have you any plans? I suppose you’re staying until tomorrow evening—have you a place to lay your head?’

  He assured her that he had. ‘And as for plans,’ he continued, ‘I rather thought I might take Victoria out into the country for the day, unless there is anything else she would rather do—or perhaps you have the day already booked?’

  ‘Not a thing,’ answered Mrs Johnson airily. ‘You two go off together. Will you be back for dinner?’

  ‘No, I shouldn’t imagine so—some time before midnight…’

  Victoria sat quietly. No one had asked her if she wished to go out for the day. Presumably it was taken for granted by everyone present that she would leap at the idea. She was scowling over this idea when Alexander turned to look at her, his eyes alight with laughter.

  ‘Will you spend the day with me, please, Victoria? It has just occurred to me that you might not want to do so.’

  She forgot to scowl. ‘Why ever not?’ she demanded, glowing under his look. ‘I’ll be ready in five minutes.’

  It was ten, for she had reckoned without the one or two essential repairs she saw fit to make to her pretty, happy face. The dress she had on would have to do—she changed her shoes for a pair of new slingbacks she had just purchased, made sure her handbag contained all that was necessary for a young woman out for the day, and descended the stairs.

  They were accorded a protracted send-off by the two elderly ladies to which the doctor listened with grave courtesy and Victoria, who was fond of them both, with loving tolerance. When at length the Mercedes slid away it was getting on for eleven o’clock.

  ‘Lunch at Bibury?’ enquired Alexander as he trickled the big car through the Saturday traffic.

  Victoria summoned up her knowledge of the English countryside. She did it with some difficulty for her head was full of other, delightful thoughts. ‘Bibury? Isn’t that the Cotswolds? Aren’t they miles away?’

  ‘Yes and no. Only eighty-five miles or so, we shall get there in nice time for lunch—unless there is anywhere else?’

  ‘It sounds lovely. I don’t know the Cotswolds very well.’

  ‘No? We’ll go on to Malmesbury and Chippenham, come back along the A4 and find somewhere for dinner— Bray might do—there’s a place by the river. I think it’s called the Waterside.’

  Having thus disposed of their day, the doctor applied himself to his driving, leaving Victoria to ponder the fact that he must either know his England very well, or was in the habit of making his plans very thoroughly before he started out. She ventured: ‘Do you always know exactly where you’re going, or do you work it out first?’

  He cast her a sidelong glance. ‘We have so little time together, dear girl, that I should dislike having to waste a minute of it poring over maps and trying to decide where we should eat.’

  It was a satisfactory answer; she sat watching him drive, making, presumably, for the Bicester road. ‘You know London very well too, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes. There would be no point in bringing the car over unless I made the fullest possible use of it.’

  ‘Do you come over often?’

  From the corner of her e
ye she saw his great shoulders heave with silent laughter. ‘Is that a leading question, my darling girl? I come over to see you whenever I possibly can. Or didn’t you know?’

  Her heart bounced up into her throat; she swallowed it back and said sedately: ‘That’s very nice of you.’

  This time his laughter exploded into a great roar. ‘Victoria, you goose, there is nothing nice about it—I do it for purely selfish reasons. I like being with you, more…’ he paused. ‘Tell me,’ he went on, ‘for I never heard the whole story in one piece, how it was that you were so shockingly understaffed when that maniac attacked you.’

  The telling of it took some time because he kept stopping her to ask questions. By the time she had finished they were well away from London and presently drove at a moderate pace through St Albans and then on to the A41 again, where the pace became not moderate at all. The Mercedes ate up the miles while they talked about Guernsey and hospital life and Mrs Johnson and then hospital again. It wasn’t until afterwards that Victoria realised that he had asked her a great many questions which she had answered without much thought, even telling him how she felt about Jeremy Blake and how he had behaved towards her—quite civilly, in fact, as though he was sorry that he had been so unpleasant. Alexander grunted as she had said it, and it was afterwards too that she decided that the grunt hadn’t been one of agreement but of disbelief. But at the time she hadn’t noticed any of that, for her whole being had been given up to the pleasure of sitting beside him with the prospect of a whole day before them. ‘This is fun,’ she said impulsively, her face alight with happiness.

  ‘Yes? I hoped you would find it so. When do you go back to work?’

  It was a sobering thought. ‘Two days’ time—how quickly a week goes!’ She looked at him as she spoke and went scarlet at his: ‘That depends on who you are with.’ He was, she thought, a trifle vexed, far too good at turning a harmless remark into something personal, she frowned as she thought it and he said to make her jump.