Ring in a Teacup Page 8

  ‘Mies is a year younger than I am, Mother. There’s someone else after her, though, such a nice young man, Willem de Vries. They grew up together.’

  ‘He’ll find it difficult,’ observed Mrs Prendergast.

  Lucy said ‘Um,’ in a non-committal manner. She had changed her mind about Willem, he was a dark horse. True, someone like Fraam der Linssen could make rings round him if he had a mind to, but surely if he had wanted Mies he would have made sure of her ages ago.

  ‘What are you thinking about?’ asked her mother suddenly.

  ‘Mies,’ said Lucy promptly. ‘She’s so lovely, Mother, you have no idea. She has gorgeous clothes too...’

  ‘You didn’t have the right dress for that dance,’ observed Mrs Prendergast far too quickly.

  Lucy took the car gently through Beaminster and out into the narrow country road leading to home. ‘It was perfectly all right,’ she declared. ‘You wouldn’t have liked the dresses most of the girls wore—nothing on under the bodice—I mean, they were cut so low there just wasn’t room.’

  Her mother made a shocked sound. ‘Don’t tell your father, darling.’

  Lucy giggled. ‘Of course not, but it’s quite the thing, you know—I didn’t see any of the men minding.’

  Her mother shot her a sideways look. ‘I don’t suppose they minded at all.’ She frowned. ‘All the same, you must get a new dress before the winter, darling.’

  Lucy nodded. ‘O.K., but I’ll wait until I’m invited, Mother dear, otherwise it’s just a waste of money. And there’s a lot of life in that green dress yet.’

  ‘There’s a lot of life in the old tweed coat I wear when I feed the chickens,’ declared her mother briskly, ‘but that’s no reason to wear it to church.’

  ‘I’ll buy a new dress,’ promised Lucy, and pulled up tidily at the front door of the Rectory.

  The stone-flagged hall smelled of wax polish and lavender mixed with something mouth-watering from the kitchen. Lucy sighed with deep content as she went in. It smelled of home, and hard on the thought was another one; that Fraam der Linssen’s house smelled of home too, despite its grandeur. A wave of something like homesickness caught at her throat and she told herself that she was being ridiculous; one wasn’t homesick for a house one had seen only once, and that fleetingly. It was because she was tired, she supposed as she followed her mother into the kitchen and then back into the dining room with her supper on a tray.

  She spent a good deal of her days off talking, relating the day by day happenings of her holiday in Amsterdam. Her parents hadn’t been there for many years and it was difficult for them to understand that it had changed. ‘Though the grachten are just the same,’ she consoled them. ‘Some of the houses are used as offices, but they look just the same from the outside.’

  ‘And where does that nice man live?’ asked her mother guilelessly.

  ‘Mr der Linssen? He’s got a mansion in a dear little side street with a canal running down the centre. I went inside one day—just into a sitting room, with a cat I found—he’s given it a home.’

  It sounded rather bald put like that and she could see her mother framing a string of questions which she forestalled with: ‘Doctor de Groot’s clinic is pretty super—he works frightfully hard, a lot of the medical men give him a hand there.’

  ‘Mr der Linssen?’ asked Mrs Prendergast.

  Lucy gave a soundless sigh. Her mother had the tenacity of a bulldog, she would end up by extracting every detail about him. ‘He goes there, too. I didn’t see much of him, though, although he’s so friendly with Mies.’ She drew a breath. ‘He avoided me as much as he could; he was always polite, of course, but he told me that he—he tried not to see me.’

  This forthright speech didn’t have the desired effect. Her mother paused in her knitting to look at nothing. ‘Now why should he say that?’ she asked no one in particular. But she didn’t mention him again for the whole of the three days in which Lucy was home, and nor, for that matter, did anyone else, a fact which she found decidedly frustrating. After all, she had seen quite a lot of him while she had been in Amsterdam, but she found bringing him into the conversation very difficult. She decided to forget about him and busied herself around the house with her mother, or drove her father through the quiet lanes when he went visiting. They were delightfully empty now; the summer visitors, and they weren’t many, had gone and the local inhabitants had returned to their rural activities, and with autumn advancing the village social life was waking up. Handicrafts, knit-ins, whist drives were very much the order of the day. Lucy obediently put in an appearance at a knit-in, hating every moment of it, for she couldn’t knit well and the conversation tended to centre round little Tom’s adenoids, old Mrs Drew’s rheumatism and the mysterious ailment which had attacked Farmer Will’s pigs. After a little while she found her thoughts wandering. That they should wander to Mr der Linssen was natural enough, she told herself; he had been part and parcel of her holiday, and that was still fresh in her head.

  She went back to St Norbert’s refreshed and ready for work. And that was a good thing, for there was plenty of it. There had been no empty beds when she had gone off duty three days earlier; now, although four patients had been discharged and their beds filled, there was a row of beds down the centre of the ward as well. Five in fact, occupied by ladies of various ages and all a little ill at ease, situated as they were in full view of everyone around them. Of course they wouldn’t stay there long, as soon as their turn came for the operating theatre they would exchange beds with someone convalescent enough to spend the day out of bed and retire to the centre of the ward at bedtime. But in the meantime they sat up against their pillows trying to look as though they always slept in the middle of a room anyway, with a constant stream of people brushing past them on either side. Lucy, racing methodically to and fro, found time to feel truly sorry for them and at the risk of not getting done, paused to have a quick word with them in turn. They were all rather sweet, she decided; the old lady in the first bed was really only there because there was nowhere else to put her; she was a terminal case which stood a small chance of recovery if she were operated upon and none at all if she wasn’t. There were those who might argue that she was taking up valuable space when it was needed so urgently for those who had a better chance and were younger, and that she was of the same opinion was obvious from her apologetic air and anxiety to please. Lucy, doing her best to dispel that look, gave the old dear a second helping of supper and a pile of magazines to look at. The girl in the bed behind her was young and pretty and terrified. She had a troublesome appendix, to be whipped out during a quiescent period, and no amount of reassuring both from the other patients and the nurses could convince her that she would survive the operation.

  ‘You’ll be sitting in a chair this time tomorrow,’ Lucy promised her, ‘or almost. Here’s Mr Trevett to look at you, he’s a poppet and he’s got two daughters about the same age as you.’

  She attended the consultant while he made a brief examination, exchanged the time of day with his houseman, saw them to the door and returned to go round the ward, checking the post-operative cases and then reporting to Sister in her office. Today had been busy, she reflected sleepily as she went off duty; tomorrow would be even worse, with six cases for theatre and she didn’t know how many more for X-ray. She yawned widely, accepted the mug of tea someone had ready and plunged, inevitably, into hospital talk.

  The day began badly. There had been a bad accident in during the early hours of the morning and the main theatre in consequence would start the list late; the six apprehensive ladies would have to wait. It was a pity that Maureen, the girl with the appendix, coaxed to calm by the day staff when they arrived on duty, and the first to go to theatre, should be delayed for more than an hour, for by the end of that time, even though sedated, she was in a fine state of nerves. Lucy, walking beside the trolley at last, holdi
ng a hand which gripped hers far too tightly, couldn’t help wishing the day done.

  The old lady went last and by then the morning had slipped into early afternoon, with everyone going full pelt and getting a little short-tempered what with curtailed dinner, two accident admissions and the routine of the ward to be fitted in. The part-time nurses came and went and Lucy, off at five o’clock, saw little chance of getting away until long after that hour; the old lady had proved a tricky case and didn’t return from theatre until well past four o’clock, and then only because Intensive Care were so full they were unable to keep her. Sister Ellis, bustling about with her sleeves rolled up, exhorting her staff to even harder work, took an experienced look at the tired old face, still barely conscious, and appointed Lucy to special her in the corner bed which had been vacated for her.

  It was after seven before she was relieved, although she hadn’t noticed the time; her patient was a challenge and she had taken it up with all the skill she possessed. The operation had been successful and would ensure at least a few more years of life, but a successful operation wasn’t much good unless the after-care was of the best. Indeed, Lucy would have stayed even longer if it had been necessary, for she was sure that the old lady would recover, but she handed over, said goodnight to Sister Ellis and went wearily off duty. She was almost at the Nurses’ Home when she remembered the letter in her pocket she meant to post to her mother. Sighing a little, she retraced her steps and went out of the hospital entrance; there was a letter box on the corner of the street which would be cleared that evening. She had slipped the letter in and was turning to go back when she saw the Panther de Ville, going slowly with Fraam der Linssen at the wheel and for a wonder, no one beside him. He didn’t see her, nor did he go into the hospital entrance. She watched the elegant car out of sight, conscious that she had wished that he had seen her. Probably he wouldn’t have stopped, she told herself robustly, and marched back to her supper and a reviving pot of tea in the company of such of her friends who were off duty. That she dreamt about Fraam der Linssen all night was pure coincidence, she told herself in the morning.

  The old lady was better. Lucy, bustling round with charts and checking drips, was delighted to see that, and Maureen, helped from her bed and made comfortable in a chair, admitted with a grin that there hadn’t been anything to get into a panic about, after all. And the other ladies were coming along nicely too; yesterday’s hard work had been worth it.

  Lucy had a lecture in the afternoon, one of Sister Tutor’s stern discourses about ward management delivered in such a way that they were all left with the impression that their futures were totally bound to hospital life for ever and ever. Lucy, going back on duty, felt quite depressed.

  It was a couple of days later when a notice on the board bade all third-year nurses, all staff nurses and as many ward Sisters as could be spared to attend a lecture to be given by Mr der Linssen. It was to be at two o’clock on the following day and Lucy, who was off duty for that afternoon, decided immediately that she wouldn’t go, only to be told by Sister Ellis that her off duty had been changed so that she might attend the lecture. ‘Because you’ve worked very hard, Nurse Prendergast,’ said Sister Ellis kindly, ‘and deserve some reward. Mr der Linssen is an exceedingly interesting man.’

  Lucy agreed, although privately she considered him interesting for other things than lecturing. She would sit well back, she decided; there would be a large number of third-year student nurses and they would take up a good many rows—the back one would be at least halfway up the hall.

  Her friends had kept a seat for her in an already full hall and she settled herself into it. Just in time; punctually to the minute Sister Tutor’s procession advanced across the platform, followed briskly by Fraam who advanced to his desk, acknowledged the upward surge of young ladies rising to their feet and then quite deliberately looked along the rows. He found Lucy easily enough, he stared at her for a long moment and without looking any further, began his lecture—this time about Parkinson’s disease and its relief through the operation of thalamotomy, to be undertaken with mathematical precision, he observed severely, and went on to describe the technique of making a lesion in the ventro-lateral nucleus of the thalamus. Lucy, making busy notes like everyone else, listened to his deep, calm voice and missed a good deal so that she had to copy feverishly from her neighbours.

  At the end, she filed out with the rest of the nurses, not looking at the platform where several of the Sisters had intercepted Mr der Linssen as he was about to leave, in order to ask questions. He must have answered them with despatch because he and Sister Tutor were coming towards her down the narrow passage used as a short cut back to the main hospital and there was no way of avoiding them unless she turned tail and walked away from them. She wished now that she had gone the long way round with the others, but the lecture had run late and she was already overdue; Sister Ellis would be wanting to go to her tea and so would Staff. Not sure whether to look straight ahead or look at them as they passed, she compromised by darting a sideways glance. Sister Tutor gave a brisk nod and went on saying whatever it was she was engaged in; Mr der Linssen gave her a cool unsmiling look which left her wondering if she were invisible. By the time she had reached the ward she was quite cross about it; after all, they had seen quite a lot of each other not so long ago, enough to warrant a nod, surely. Her small, almost plain face wore such an expression for the rest of the day that several patients asked her if she felt ill and Sister Ellis, more forthright, wanted to know if she were in a fit of the sulks, because if so, her ward wasn’t the place in which to have them. Lucy said she was sorry meekly enough and pinned a smile on to her nicely curved but wide mouth until she went off duty, when she allowed it to be replaced by a scowl.

  The scowl was still there when she reached her room and because she wasn’t in the mood to drink tea with her numerous friends, she declared that she would have a bath and go to bed early. She was indeed in her dressing gown when the warden, a thin, ill-tempered woman, came grumbling up the stairs. ‘It’s for you, Nurse Prendergast. Eight o’clock and I should be off duty, heaven knows I’ve had a busy day.’ A gross exaggeration if ever there was one; she had come on duty at one o’clock, but Lucy let that pass. ‘There’s someone to see you—at the front entrance of the home. You’d better dress yourself and go down.’

  ‘Who is it?’

  The warden shrugged. ‘How should I know? Didn’t give a name, said he knew your parents.’

  The vague idea that it might have been Fraam died almost before it was born; it sounded like someone from the village, probably with a parcel—her mother had on occasion sent cakes and such like bulky articles by parishioners going to London for one reason or another.

  ‘I’ll go down,’ said Lucy. ‘Thanks.’

  She dressed again, this time in slacks and a sweater because her uniform had already been cast into the laundry bin. She didn’t bother overmuch with her hair but tied it back with a bit of ribbon, barely looking in the looking glass as she did so, thrust her feet into her duty shoes and went downstairs.

  The Home was quiet but for the steady hum of voices from behind its many closed doors. There was a very comfortable sitting room on the ground floor, but everyone much preferred sitting cosily, packed tight in someone’s bedroom, gossiping and drinking pots of tea until bedtime. Lucy crossed the rather dark, tiled hall and opened the heavy front door and found Fraam der Linssen on the other side of it.

  She was aware that her heart was beating a good deal too fast and she had to wait a second or two before she could say in a steady voice: ‘Good evening, Mr der Linssen. You wanted to see me?’

  ‘Naturally I wished to see you, Lucy. I have messages from Mies and a scarf which you left behind and have been asked to deliver to you.’ And when she just stood there: ‘Am I allowed to come inside? It is now October, you know, and chilly.’

  She opened the door a little
wider. ‘Oh, yes—of course. There’s a room where we may receive visitors.’

  He looked around at the rather bleak little room into which she ushered him. ‘Designed to damp down the strongest feelings,’ he observed blandly. ‘I wonder how many young men survive a visit here?’

  She answered him seriously. ‘Well, if they’re really keen, it doesn’t seem to matter,’ she told him, and wondered why he smiled. She glanced round herself at the upright steel chairs and the table with the pot plant. ‘It is rather unfriendly, I suppose. I’ve only been here once before.’

  ‘Was he—er—put off?’ asked Mr der Linssen in an interested voice.

  ‘It was my godmother on a visit from Scotland,’ she explained. ‘Is Mies well?’

  She had sat herself on one of the awful chairs but he, after a thoughtful look, decided to stand, towering over her. She thought how alien he looked in the anonymity of the visitors’ room. She would, she supposed, always associate him with the lovely old house in Amsterdam.

  He took his time answering her. At length: ‘She is very well and sends her love. I took her out a few days ago, she looked very beautiful and turned all heads.’

  Lucy nodded. ‘She’s one of the loveliest girls I’ve ever seen.’ She stared across at him. ‘Don’t you think so?’

  ‘Indeed I do. She made me promise to take you out for a meal while I was over here. Will you come now?’

  She looked at him with horror. ‘Now? Like this? You’re joking!’

  ‘You look all right to me, but change into something else if you wish to.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Is ten minutes enough? We’ll go somewhere quiet.’

  Where he won’t feel ashamed of me, thought Lucy, and was on the point of refusing when he repeated: ‘I promised. I like to keep my promises.’

  She got to her feet. ‘Ten minutes,’ she told him, and went back to her room. They were going somewhere quiet, he had said. She decided what to wear while she took a lightning shower. The tweed coat, an expensive garment she had bought years ago and which refused to wear out, and the Marks & Spencer velvet skirt with a shirt blouse. She pinned her hair with more regard to neatness than style, spent a few minutes on her face and sped downstairs. At any rate, she wouldn’t disgrace a steak bar or a Golden Egg.