Britannia All at Sea Read online

  ‘It’s down here,’ she said eagerly, ‘if we go along here and look to the left…’

  ‘There will be a better view further on,’ observed the professor matter-of-factly.

  ‘Why are you laughing?’ asked Britannia.

  ‘My dear good girl, I am not even smiling.’

  ‘Inside you—something’s amusing you…’

  He shot her a quick look. ‘I can see that I shall have to be very careful of my behaviour when we are together,’ he said smoothly. ‘Since you asked, I was remembering something which amused me.’

  She let that pass, although it was nice, she reflected, that the professor could be amused… ‘There!’ she exclaimed, and back-pedalled to a halt. ‘That’s the place. It must be sheer heaven in the summer—all those copper beeches and that row of limes. I wonder what the garden is like.’

  ‘Probably if we go on a little further we could see it,’ suggested her companion. He was right; the house came into view, typically Dutch, of mellow red brick, tall chimney pots among the gables, its large windows shining in the pale sunshine. It was too far off to see as much as she wanted, but she could glimpse a paved walk all round the house, outbuildings at the side of a formal garden laid out before its massive front.

  ‘I hope whoever lives there loves it,’ remarked Britannia. ‘Do you suppose it belongs to some old family? Perhaps it had to be sold to pay death duties and now there’s someone living there who can’t tell Biedermeier from mid-Victorian Rococo…’

  ‘What a vivid imagination you have! And do you really know the difference between Rococo and Biedermeier?’ He wasn’t looking at her but staring across the countryside towards the distant house.

  ‘Yes, I think so. You see, my father is an antique dealer and I always went with him to sales and auctions. I didn’t mean to boast.’

  ‘You admire antique furniture? Which is your favourite period?’

  Britannia had got off her bike and was leaning against the low wall. ‘Oh, yes. Early Regency and Gothic.’

  He asked casually, ‘Have you been inside any of the houses round here?’

  She shook her head. ‘No, and I don’t expect to. I only came to keep Joan company—she’s the Veskes’ goddaughter.’ She got on her bike again. ‘Can we get all the way round, or do we go back the way we came?’

  The professor smiled faintly. ‘You wish to return? We can go on. Do you intend visiting any of the hospitals while you are here?’

  ‘I’d like to, but one can’t just present oneself and say look, I’m a nurse, can I look round. Mijnheer Veske might be able to give me an introduction, but Joan isn’t keen, anyway.’

  They were side by side, pedalling into the chilly wind. ‘I should be glad to arrange a visit for you,’ said the professor surprisingly. ‘Arnhem—I go there twice a week. I will call for you and bring you back after my teaching round.’

  Britannia eyed him with surprise. ‘Would you really? Why are you being so nice? I thought you couldn’t bear the sight of me.’

  His voice was smooth. ‘Shall we say that the fresh air and exercise which you recommended have had their good effect?’

  He didn’t go into the house with her but bade her a casual goodbye without saying another word about her visit to the hospital. Probably he had regretted his words, decided Britannia as she went to her room to tidy herself before presenting herself in the sitting room for tea.

  There were visitors; an elderly couple, their daughter and a son, home from some far-flung spot on long leave. Britannia was made instantly aware of the interesting fact that he and Joan were getting on remarkably well and being a true friend, engaged the daughter in a conversation which lasted until the visitors got up to leave.

  Their car had barely disappeared down the drive when Joan told her happily: ‘We’re going out tomorrow. Britannia, do you mind? I mean, if you’re left on your own. He’s only got another week…’

  ‘Plenty of time,’ comforted Britannia. ‘Besides, it was an instant thing, wasn’t it? Flashing lights and sunbeams and things, it stuck out a mile.’ She added: ‘Prince Charming, love?’

  Joan looked smug and hopeful and apprehensive all at the same time. ‘Oh, yes. Oh, Britannia, you’ve no idea how it feels!’

  In which she was wrong, of course.

  Britannia, happily, did not have long to wait before the professor paid her another visit, although visit was hardly the right word. He drove up some time after breakfast, asked to see her, and when she presented herself, enquired of her coolly if she was ready to go to Arnhem with him. She felt a surge of pleasure, for Joan was committed for the whole day with Dirk de Jonge and Mevrouw Veske had asked her a little anxiously what she was going to do with herself until lunchtime; all the same she said sedately: ‘How kind, but I didn’t know that you had asked me to come with you today. It’s not very convenient…’

  He stood bareheaded in the hall, watching her. ‘May I ask what you intended doing today?’ His voice was very bland.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Britannia before she could stop herself, and then waited for him to make some nasty remark. But he didn’t, he said quite mildly: ‘In that case I should be glad to take you to Arnhem. I think you will find the hospital interesting. You have, after all, nearly a week here, have you not, and if your friend is going to spend it exclusively with de Jonge you will have to seek your own amusement, will you not?’

  ‘Do you know him? I thought he looked nice…’

  ‘Yes, I know him, and if by nice you mean unmarried, able to support a wife and anxious to marry your friend, then yes, he is nice.’

  ‘You have no need to talk like that. You must live close by…?’

  His brief ‘Yes,’ didn’t help at all. Britannia sighed. ‘I’ll fetch my coat.’

  Mevrouw Veske gave her a roguish look when she disclosed her plans for the day. ‘Very nice, dear, I’m sure you’ll enjoy yourself, and in such good company too.’ She wore the pleased expression that older ladies wore when they scented romance with a capital R, and Britannia, incurably honest, made haste to explain that she was merely being given a lift to the hospital and a return lift when it was convenient to the professor. Rather a waste of time, for Mevrouw Veske, accompanying her to the hall to bid the professor good morning, wished them both a pleasant day together, with an arch look which wasn’t lost on him, for the moment they were in the car he remarked silkily:

  ‘Your hostess seems to be under the impression that we are to spend the day in each other’s company. I hope that you don’t think the same.’

  ‘No,’ said Britannia sweetly, and seethed silently as she said it, ‘I don’t—but you know what happily married women are like, they want to see everyone else happily married; such an absurd notion in our case that I see no point in wasting breath on it.’

  ‘Why absurd?’ he asked blandly.

  Britannia settled down comfortably in her seat. ‘Well,’ she explained carefully, ‘we’re in—incompatible, aren’t we? Different backgrounds and interests and…and…’

  ‘Ages?’ he queried.

  ‘Lord, no—what has age got to do with it? That was a very pretty girl in church with you.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Does she live close by, too?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Britannia turned to look at him. ‘I wonder why you offered me a lift? Certainly not for the conversation.’

  He said blandly: ‘I thought I had explained about the fresh air and exercise…’

  ‘Oh, pooh. I shall hold my tongue, since you like it that way.’

  He ignored this. ‘When you get to the hospital you will be put in the care of a surgical Sister who speaks excellent English. She will take you to any wards you wish to see. I shall be a couple of hours—you will be warned when I am ready to leave.’

  ‘Who looks after you?’ asked Britannia.

  ‘I have an excellent housekeeper.’

  ‘She must be a devoted one too if you fire orders at her in the same way as you’re fir
ing them at me. You know, I don’t think I want to go to Arnhem after all. Would you stop, please? I’ll go for a walk instead.’

  He laughed aloud. ‘We have come almost six miles and this isn’t a main road, nor are there any villages—you may have noticed that we are passing the Air Force field. You could walk back the way we have come or continue on to Arnhem. It will be a long…’ He broke off and slowed the car’s quiet rush. There was a woman standing in the middle of the road, waving her arms and shouting. As the professor brought the car to a halt she ran towards it, still shouting and crying too, and he got out without more ado to catch her by the shoulders and say something firmly to her. Britannia had got out as well, for plainly there was something very wrong. The woman was pointing now, towards a very small, rather tumbledown cottage half hidden in the trees, and the professor started towards it, the woman tugging at his sleeve. ‘A child taken ill,’ he said briefly, and Britannia went too; after all, she was a nurse and there might be something she could do.

  The child was on the floor of the small room, crowded with furniture, into which they went. A little girl, whose small face was already blue and who had no trace of breath. The professor went down on his knees, asking brief, curt questions of the hysterical mother, then turned to Britannia.

  ‘Sit down,’ he commanded her. ‘Take the child on your knees and flex her head. There’s a pebble impacted in her larynx, so her mother says.’

  He waited a few seconds while Britannia did as she was bid and then swept an exploratory finger into the child’s mouth. ‘Have you a Biro pen with you?’ he asked, and took a penknife from his pocket.

  She didn’t say more than she had to, for talk at that time was wasting precious seconds. ‘My bag—outside pocket.’

  She watched while he found the pen, pulled it apart and handed her the plastic casing; a makeshift trachy tube indeed, but better than nothing.

  ‘Hold the child’s head back, give me the tube when I say so,’ said the professor, and opened his knife. ‘This may just work,’ he observed. It took seconds and with the improvised tube in place the little girl’s face began to take on a faint pink as air reached her lungs once more. But the professor wasted no time in contemplating his handiwork. ‘Get into the car,’ he said, and took the child from Britannia’s knee and followed her as she ran back to the Rolls. ‘Hold her steady on your knee and hold the tube exactly as it is now. I’m going to drive to the hospital.’

  Britannia paled a little, but her ‘yes,’ was said in a steady enough voice and the professor, acknowledging it with a grunt, went back for the mother, and when she was in the car, still crying and hysterical, picked up the telephone she had noticed beside his seat. He spoke briefly, bent over the child for a moment, got into his seat and drove off smoothly. He drove very fast too; Britannia, her hand locked on the frail plastic tube, sent up a stream of incoherent prayers, mingled with heartfelt thanks that Arnhem couldn’t be very far away now. And at the professor’s speed, it wasn’t. The city’s pleasant outskirts enclosed them, gave way to busy streets and in no time at all, the forecourt of a hospital.

  His few terse words into the telephone had borne fruit. Two white-coated young doctors, a rather fierce-looking Sister and her attendant satellite were waiting for them. In no time at all the professor was out of the car, round its elegant bonnet and bending over the child through Britannia’s open door, with the two young men squeezed in on her other side and the Sister right behind the professor, a covered tray in her hands. He used the instruments on it with lightning speed; the plastic Biro case was eased out and a tracheotomy tube inserted and its tapes neatly tied. The professor muttered and the two doctors immediately started the sucker they had brought with them; after a few moments the child’s face began to look almost normal again while the trachy tube made reassuring whistling noises with each breath. The professor spoke again and lifted the child off Britannia’s knee; seconds later she was alone, stretching her cramped back and legs and watching the small urgent procession of trolley, professor and his assistants disappearing into the hospital.

  It was almost an hour before anyone came—a porter, who eyed her with some surprise as he got into the driver’s seat beside her. She bade him a quite inadequate hullo and hoped that he could speak English. He could after a fashion, but his ‘In garage’ hardly reassured her.

  With the British belief that if she spoke enough he would understand her, Britannia asked: ‘Will the professor be long?’ and then when she saw how hopeless it was, managed a: ‘De Professor komt?’

  He shook his head, thought deeply and came out with: ‘Long time.’

  He had forgotten her, of course. She smiled at the man, got out of the car and watched it being driven away, round to the back of the hospital. She could go and enquire, she supposed; ask someone where the professor was and how long he would be, but she fancied that he wouldn’t take kindly to being disturbed at his work. She walked slowly out of the hospital gates and started towards the main streets of the town they had gone through. Sooner or later she would see a policeman who would tell her where she could get a bus.

  It took a little while, for the streets confused her and there seemed to be no policemen at all, but she found one at last, got him to understand what she wanted and set off once more, her head whirling with lengthy instructions as to how and where to get a bus for Hoenderloo, so it was some time later when she boarded the vehicle and wedged herself thankfully between a stout woman and a very thin old man. There would be a mile or so to walk from the bus stop and the afternoon was closing in rapidly, reminding her that she had had no lunch, but she cheered herself up with the thought of the cosy sitting room at the villa and the plentiful dinner Mevrouw Veske set before her guests each evening.

  The bus made slow progress, stopping apparently wherever it was most convenient for its passengers to alight, but it reached her stop at last, and she got out quickly, the only passenger to do so, anxious to get back to the villa. She had taken a bare half dozen steps when she saw the professor looming at the side of the road just ahead of her, the Rolls behind him. He took her arm without a word and marched her to the car, declaring coldly: ‘You tiresome girl, as though I don’t have enough to do without traipsing round the country looking for you!’

  She couldn’t see his face very clearly in the early dusk. ‘I’m quite able to look after myself,’ she pointed out reasonably. ‘I didn’t know what to do when the porter came to take the car away; he said you would be a long time and I thought that perhaps you intended remaining at the hospital. Is the child all right?’

  ‘Yes.’ He gave her arm a little shake. ‘You imagined that I would do that without sending you a message? Don’t be absurd!’

  They were in the car now and she turned to look at him and observe in a kindly tone: ‘Not absurd, you know. You had enough to think of without bothering your head about me.’ She smiled at him. ‘I can’t think why you should.’

  ‘I’ll tell you why,’ he ground out, and then in his usual cool voice: ‘But not now.’ He started the car without another word.

  The Veskes had been very nice about it, Britannia decided as she got ready for bed that evening; they had asked the professor in for a drink, expressing discreet sympathy with her, murmuring comfortably about difficulties with language and misunderstandings. He had stayed for half an hour making polished conversation before making his farewells, not that he had bothered overmuch with his goodbyes to her; a nod, a casual tot ziens and her thanks shrugged off carelessly. And come to think of it, he hadn’t bothered to thank her for the part she had played that morning. She tugged the covers up to her chin on a wave of indignation. He was arrogant and ill-tempered and just about the horridest man she had ever met, and she loved him with all her heart. All the same, she would cut him dead when she saw him again. She began to concoct episodes in which he was made to appear in a very poor light while she ignored him coolly, but presently she got a little muddled and before she could sort out the muddle, was a
sleep.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE PROFESSOR called the next afternoon and Britannia quite forgot to be cool and ignore him. Joan had gone off for the day directly after breakfast and now, after a morning shopping with Mevrouw Veske and a lunch à deux, she had got into slacks, a thick sweater and an old anorak of her hostess’s and was on her way to fetch her bike. The weather was hardly promising, but Britannia was in no mood to bother about that; she was wondering how she could find out where the professor lived and if possible, despite her determination to ignore him, see him again, so that the sight of him striding towards her round the corner of the house sent her spirits soaring. She stood outside the garage, holding the bike, watching him coming towards her. Beautifully turned out, as always, assured, far too good-looking… She wished him a quiet good afternoon, and waited.

  ‘I thought we might try again,’ he said.

  The urge to fling her machine to the ground and accept on the instant was very great. She clutched the handlebars with woolly gloved hands and said politely: ‘How kind of you. But as you see, I’m just off for a ride.’

  He didn’t bother to answer her but took the bike from her, leaned it against the garage wall and took her arm. ‘It’s too cold to cycle. I’ve warned Zuster Vinke that you would be coming.’

  Britannia stopped in her tracks to face him. ‘That was a little high-handed of you,’ she pointed out.

  He grinned. ‘I am high-handed, I shout, I’m nasty, ill-tempered, irritable…I forget the rest, although you have told me often enough.’ He gave her a little shake. ‘I have never been preached at so often in my life before.’

  Britannia raised large, serious brown eyes to his. ‘Oh, I don’t mean to, really I don’t; you’re a splendid surgeon…’

  ‘And so are thousands of others. Britannia, I’m sorry about yesterday. I was angry because I didn’t know where you were, and I was angry with myself for not having done something about it. Forgive me and come with me now.’

  ‘Well, I’m not dressed…’ she began, already half won over.