The Fateful Bargain Read online

  ‘A little holiday,’ she promised him as she fumbled to fill his saucer, ‘and soon I’ll be on day duty and you won’t be lonely any more.’

  She reflected as she got ready for bed that she would have started her third year before the next pay-day, and that would mean more money—another five or six months and there would be enough saved for the first operation. She would get hold of Day Sister and ask her the best way to set about it. Emily closed her eyes, intending to go to sleep, but instead she found herself thinking about the man who had almost knocked her over. He had sounded cross and impatient at first. Perhaps he had his worries too—a wife and children? A mortgage? A car that hadn’t passed its MOT? She dozed off without bothering to answer her own questions.

  Two days later she packed her shoulder-bag, fastened Podge into his basket and went home, a fairly simple journey since the hospital was in the East End and on the South Bank of the Thames; Waterloo Station was a short bus ride away and there was a local train service to Eynsford.

  She sat in the train, one hand on Podge’s basket, and looked out at the Kent countryside, quiet and still green under the autumn sun. One day, she promised herself, she would leave London and get a post in a country town—Canterbury, perhaps, Rochester, even Tunbridge Wells, none of them too far away from her home. She would have a Sister’s post, of course… Her thoughts became woolly; she had been up all night and, even though she would have a nap when she got home, she still had to get there. She pulled her tired wits together as the train drew into the station, and got out.

  Her father lived on the edge of the village. She passed the old Tollhouse at the junction of Sparepenny Lane with the road leading to the ford, and turned down a lane leading to a row of charming cottages. The end one was home; Emily went up the short garden path between the neglected flowerbeds and opened the solid wooden door.

  Her father was sitting in his wheelchair, reading; with the kettle boiling its head off too. Emily put Podge’s basket down, kissed her father, turned off the gas under the kettle and cast off her outdoor things.

  Her father surveyed her with pleasure. ‘What a delightful surprise, Emily! You’re here for a few days?’

  He couldn’t disguise the eagerness in his voice and she answered quickly, ‘Nights off, Father; four whole days after today. I’ll make us a cup of coffee and you can bring me up to date with all the news. How are you?’

  Mr Grenfell eyed her lovingly. ‘Managing very well, my dear. Night duty finished? Have you been very busy?’

  They exchanged their news over coffee while Podge, who had been there before, crept around reviving his memory of the place. Satisfied that it hadn’t changed, he drank the saucer of milk he was offered and curled up on a chair in the sun.

  Emily drank her coffee in sleepy content; it was lovely to be home again. She glanced round the comfortable, rather shabby room, at the comfortable chairs, the Welsh dresser with its complement of rather nice china plates and dishes, the balloon-backed chairs with their mid-Victorian seats which somehow looked quite right with the cricket table. The room was a hotch-potch of charming antique furniture, which, after years of being together, blended nicely. Emily’s eye noted the dust under the dresser; after a good night’s sleep she would give the cottage a thorough clean. Mrs Owen was a dear old thing and willing and very kind, but she had neither the time nor the strength to do more than tidy up each day.

  Because she had wanted to talk about him ever since she had met him, Emily told her father about the man who had almost knocked her over on that wet and windy morning. She made a joke of it and joined in her father’s amusement, but somewhere deep inside her that wistful longing to meet him again was definitely there. Only, she told herself, so that she could see if she liked him; after that she would forget him; he was too unsettling.

  Not too difficult to forget him during the next day or two, as it turned out. Her days were full as she polished and Hoovered, dug the garden and weeded and played bezique with her father. She renewed friendships in the village too, with people who had known her since she was a little girl and who were full of kindly curiosity about her life in London. Emily answered them all in her friendly, matter-of-fact way, told them frankly that she had no young man and no prospect of one either, and lent a sympathetic ear to complaints of illness, naughty children and tiresome grandparents. Perhaps she should be a health visitor or something similar, she mused as she walked back home.

  The evening before she went back to the hospital, she and her father had a talk. He had already told her that his arthritis was getting slowly worse, certainly more painful, and although he had made light of it, she sensed his worry.

  ‘Would it be possible to mortgage the cottage?’

  ‘My dear child, that’s been done some years ago—your mother’s illness…’

  ‘There’s nothing we can sell?’

  ‘There would be very little money left by the time I’d redeemed the mortgage, my dear, and how could we afford to find a house to rent, or even a flat?’ He added slowly, ‘I could go into a geriatric ward…’

  ‘Over my dead body!’ declared Emily. ‘Let’s keep on as we are and hope for the best.’

  She hated leaving her father. London, sprawling to meet her as she sat in the train, looked drab. She was aware that large parts of the city were elegant, with spacious squares and quiet streets lined with lovely old houses, and sometimes on her nights off she would take a bus to St James’s Park, eat her sandwiches there, and then roam the neighbouring streets. A very different London from the one in which she worked and lived.

  Back in hospital, the notice board informed her that she was to go to the Men’s Orthopaedic Ward in six days’ time—day duty, of course. Crowded round the notice as she and the other night nurses were on their way to the wards, she was surprised to hear cries of envy from such of her friends as were being posted at the same time.

  ’emily, you lucky creature!’ declared the pretty student nurse who was to report to Women’s Surgical. ‘You’ll see that new consultant!’

  Emily turned away from the noticeboard. ‘You can have him as far as I’m concerned,’ she observed matter-of-factly, ‘though I like the idea of Orthopaedics.’

  A nice change from the medical ladies, mostly chronic bronchitis, bad hearts and diabetes and, by the very nature of their illnesses, dispirited. Emily was a shy girl, but nursing a man was quite a different matter from socialising; she was completely at ease with her patients, but put them into their clothes and let her meet them away from their beds, outside the hospital, and she became a quiet, mouselike girl with no conversation. Yet she was liked at Pearson’s; the students and the young housemen looked upon her as a rather silent sister, always ready to make cocoa or cut them a sandwich if they had been called out during the night. But none of them had ever asked her out.

  Her last few nights on duty were busy ones; a sudden influx of elderly ladies with nasty chests, naturally enough sorry for themselves, anxious about husbands they had left to manage on their own, cats and dogs dependent upon neighbours and uncertain as to whether they had turned off the gas. Emily soothed and encouraged, listened endlessly to their worries and even, for one old lady, offered to go to her nearby flat and make sure that the canary was being properly fed. It made her late, which was why Mr van Tecqx saw her on the way home. He had walked to the hospital since it was a fine day and he was nearing it as she hurried down the street towards the Underground. She had a plastic bag under one arm and was so deep in thought that she didn’t see him. She was, as she so often was, engaged in mental arithmetic.

  She spent her nights off turning out her room and reading up Orthopaedics so that at least she would have some idea about that branch of nursing. The Sister on the ward was reputed to be an old tartar but a splendid nurse. Even the more lively of her companions had declared that they would go anywhere but Orthopaedics, although now that the mysterious consultant was there they were prepared to change their ideas. Emily, if given the chanc
e, would quite cheerfully have exchanged a posting with any one of them.

  She climbed the staircase in plenty of time on her first morning of day duty. Sister Cook set great store by punctuality and, although she wouldn’t be on duty until half an hour after the nursing staff, she invariably asked her staff nurses if there had been any latecomers.

  In her first year, Emily had spent six weeks on the women’s side, but since she had had very little to do with the actual treatment of the patients then, what knowledge she had gleaned was of little use to her now.

  Staff Nurse Ash was a large comforting type. ‘You’ll soon get the hang of things,’ she assured Emily. ‘Don’t worry if Sister Cook blasts your head off, it’s just her way. We’ve just got time to go round the ward before she comes on duty.’

  All the beds were occupied and most of them had various frames and cradles to support or protect the inmates’ broken bones. They were a cheerful lot of men, calling up and down the ward to each other, joking with Staff Nurse Ash, and wishing Emily cheerful good mornings. It was a far cry from Women’s Medical; she was going to like it.

  She wasn’t quite so sure an hour later. Sister Cook was in a testy mood that morning; she disliked having her nurses changed, and here was a girl who didn’t look capable of the quite heavy work she would be expected to do. True, her reports from the other wards were good, but she looked as if a strong breeze would knock her down. Sister Cook, a big woman herself, rather despised the smaller members of her sex.

  Over coffee in the canteen, Emily was questioned by her friends. They brushed aside her comments about Sister Cook and the patients; they wanted to know if the Dutch consultant had been on the ward, and if so, was he as marvellous as rumour had it?

  Emily hadn’t seen him. There had been a couple of housemen who had been friendly and there was a consultant’s round at eleven o’clock, but she had no idea who was going to take it. With a customary eye on the clock she hurried back to the ward.

  There was an hour before the round was due to start. Sister Cook marched up and down the ward, her hawklike eye searching out every small defect which might spoil the perfection of it. A junior nurse had already retired into the sluice room in tears, it just needed someone to trip over a Balkan Beam or drop a bowl; heaven forfend that she would be the one to do it, thought Emily with unhappy memories of the French consultant who had been so scathing about her clumsiness.

  The ward clock pointed to eleven and the ward doors swung open. Sister Cook had taken up her position facing it; behind her stood the staff nurse, Nurse Ashe, and the junior staff nurse, both holding X-rays, Path Lab forms and all the paraphernalia necessary for the round, and behind them stood Emily, entrusted with a small trolley upon which were laid out, in an orderly fashion, the patients’ notes.

  It was a very good thing that they were laid out so neatly on the trolley, for when the door was thrust open and she saw who it was who came in, she would have dropped the lot if she had been holding on to them. The man who had almost knocked her down, no less, looking quite different in a dark grey suit of impeccable design, looming head and shoulders above the group of people milling about him; his Registrar, his housemen, medical students, the rather hearty lady from Physiotherapy and the social worker, the whole party swollen by Sister Cook, her staff nurses and Emily, trying to look as though she wasn’t there. Not that she needed to worry; his gaze swept over her with no sign of recognition.

  The round pursued its usual course with frequent pauses to assess a patient’s mobility, lengthy arguments as to treatments, and even longer pauses while Mr van Tecqx listened patiently to the complaints, fears and doubts of the occupants of the beds. It took all of an hour, and the smell of the patients’ dinners was strong from the ward kitchen as they all halted at the doors and polite exchanges were made before the consultant’s posse moved off down the corridor.

  ‘Nurse Grenfell, take the patients’ charts back to my Office.’ Sister Cook was already sailing in the opposite direction, intent on ticking off a patient who had had the temerity to complain to the consultant, of all people, about the breakfast porridge.

  Emily escaped thankfully. It had been exciting meeting the man again, and thank heaven he hadn’t recognised her, although it had been pretty mean of him to let her ramble on about her work when he was working at Pearson’s himself.

  She gained the office and started to stack the notes exactly as Sister liked them. She was almost finished when the door opened and Mr van Tecqx walked in.

  Emily dropped the notes she was holding and said with a snap, ‘There, look what you’ve made me do!’ and then she remembered who she was talking to.

  Her, ‘Sorry, sir,’ was polite but insincere, and she got down on to the floor and started to pick up the scattered sheets.

  He got down beside her, taking up so much room that the Office seemed very small indeed. ‘Surprised to see me?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes—well, yes, of course I am. I never imagined—you could have told me…’ She took the papers from him and got to her feet. ‘I’m not supposed to talk to you. Sister Cook will…’

  ‘No, she won’t.’ He had taken the notes from her again and was arranging them tidily in their folder. ‘Do you like this ward?’

  ‘Yes, thank you, sir.’

  He stared down at her, neat and rather prim. ‘I can see that if we are to get anywhere conversationally, it will have to be away from this place. I’ll be outside at eight o’clock this evening; we’ll go somewhere and eat and exchange our life histories.’

  Emily goggled up at his placid face. ‘But we can’t! Besides,’ she added with some spirit, ‘I haven’t a life history.’

  When he didn’t say anything, only smiled at her, she went on, ‘This just won’t do, you know. I must go back on the ward…’

  He opened the door for her. ‘Eight o’clock,’ he reminded her as she edged past him.

  CHAPTER TWO

  EMILY HAD NO intention of doing anything of the sort; she told herself that a dozen times during the day. It was absurd anyway—how could she possibly go out with anyone in the elderly coat she wore to work? She would have had a long day and she would be tired and her hair would look awful. He must have been joking—but just to be on the safe side, she would go out through the side entrance. She would have to nip across the back of the entrance hall to reach it, but no one would see her.

  All the same, she rushed back to her room during her three hours off after midday dinner, saw to Podge, washed her hair and, while it was drying, did her nails. Not because she had any intention of accepting Mr van Tecqx’s surprising invitation, indeed she still wasn’t sure if it was a joke. And she was far too busy to speculate about that during the evening; there were arms and legs to prepare ready for operation in the morning and supper to serve, and since both staff nurses were off duty and she was on with Sister Cook, there was the added complication of keeping out of that lady’s way as much as possible.

  At length she was allowed to go, and skipped through the corridors and down the stairs to the cloakroom, where she bundled on her coat and with no thought as to her appearance, hurried down the back stairs to the back of the entrance hall. It was empty, although she could see Briggs’ bald head in his lodge. Quelling a wish to go out of the entrance and have supper with Mr van Tecqx even as, she strongly suspected, he wouldn’t be waiting for her, Emily nipped across the hall and opened the side door used by the staff and those fortunate enough to travel in their own cars.

  The Bentley was parked exactly outside the door and Mr van Tecqx was leaning against its bonnet. Emily would have bounced back inside, only he was beside her before she could do so.

  ‘I am much encouraged,’ he told her, ‘to find that we think alike—you, that you would escape by this door, and I quite certain of it. Come along, now, I’m hungry.’

  Emily stood outside the door, his hand on her arm. ‘Look, Mr van Tecqx, this really won’t do—you’re a consultant and I’m not even trained…’
r />   A silly sort of remark, she realised as soon as she had uttered it. She tried again. ‘I can’t possibly go out with you in this.’ She waved a hand at her coat.

  ‘Well, of course you can’t. I’ll drive you to your lodgings and wait while you tidy yourself. You can have ten minutes; I’ve booked a table for half past eight.’

  She made no effort to move. ‘You were sure I would come?’

  ‘No, that’s why I waited here.’ He smiled at her suddenly, which somehow made it perfectly normal to be going out to supper with him, although she was convinced that when she had the time to think about it she would be horrified. ‘Student nurses just don’t go out with consultants,’ she voiced her thoughts out loud.

  ‘There is always a first time.’

  He popped her into the car and got in beside her.

  Outside her gate she said, ‘I’m sorry I can’t ask you in—I’ve only got one room…’

  For answer he got out of the car and went to open the door for her. ‘Ten minutes,’ he reminded her carefully.

  Emily fed Podge, washed her face and made it up rather sketchily, then tore into her only decent dress—navy blue needlecord, bought in a C & A sale. Her coat was navy blue too, almost as elderly as the one she wore to work but neatly brushed and pressed. Her hair she brushed and tied back with a ribbon, as there was no time to pin it up. She thrust her feet into her one pair of high-heeled shoes, caught up her handbag and gloves, patted Podge and told him to be a good boy, and went out of the house followed by Mrs Winter’s shrill voice.