MARCH was doing exactly as it should; it had come in like a lamb, now it was going out like a lion. An icy rain driven by a roaring wind was sweeping the streets clear of all but those unfortunates who had been forced to go out. And these, needless to say, were scuttling along, anxious to get within doors as fast as possible.
There was a long queue half-way down the street, an impatient line of people under umbrellas, jostling for position, ready to rush forward when their bus arrived. The girl at the end of the queue edged away from the drips running down the back of her neck from the umbrella behind her and sighed resignedly. It had been a long day and she was tired and home was still a bus ride away; she could not even tell if she would be lucky enough to get on to the next bus…
It came, sending great splashes of water from the gutter as it slowed to a halt. The queue surged forward. The owner of the umbrella gave her a vicious poke in the back as the slow-moving elderly man in front of her stepped back and planted a foot on her instep. She gave a gasp of pain and came to an involuntary halt, to be instantly swept aside by those behind her. Which meant one foot, the injured one, in the muddy water of the gutter.
The bus went, taking with it almost all the queue, leaving the girl to lift a dripping foot back on to the pavement and hobble to join it once more. But she didn’t reach it; the car which had drawn up behind the bus edged forward and stopped beside her and the driver got out.
He looked even taller than he actually was in the light of the street lamps and she couldn’t see him very clearly. He said with decided impatience, ‘Are you hurt? I saw what happened. Get into the car, I’ll drive you home.’
She looked up from the contemplation of torn tights and a trickle of blood. ‘Thank you; I prefer to go by bus.’ Her voice was a pretty as her face but there was a decided chill to it.
‘Don’t be a fool, young woman, I’ve no intention of kidnapping you. Besides, you look hefty enough to take care of yourself.’ He ignored her outraged gasp. ‘Don’t keep me waiting, I have an appointment.’ The impatience was even more decided.
Still smarting from having her Junoesque and charming person referred to as hefty, the girl took his proffered arm and allowed herself to be settled beside him. ‘Where to?’ he asked, and slid into the stream of traffic.
The girl gave a delicate sniff; the car was a Rolls-Royce and smelled of leather and, faintly, of cologne. She said in her nice voice, still chilly though, ‘You should have asked me before I got into the car, which I wouldn’t have done if you hadn’t been so impatient. Meadow Road, a turning off Stamford Street. That’s…’
‘I know where it is. Which number?’
‘Fifteen.’ She added, ‘It’s quite a long way. You could drop me off at a bus-stop; I shall be quite all right.’
He didn’t answer, and after a moment she realised that he wasn’t going to. She glanced at her foot; it had left a muddy, watery mark on the car’s splendid carpet and it was bleeding sluggishly. Nothing serious, she decided.
They crossed the river and he turned the car into the busy streets around Waterloo station and then, without being told, into Meadow Road, a dingy street which didn’t live up to its name for there wasn’t a blade of grass throughout its length. Its houses were bay-windowed with steps leading to shabby front doors, and iron railings concealed the semi-basements. Her companion stopped before number fifteen and got out. It surprised her when he opened her door and offered a hand. She stood on the pavement, looking up at him; she was a tall girl but she had to look quite a way.
‘Thank you, you were most kind. I hope you won’t be late for your appointment.’
‘What is your name?’
She answered matter-of-factly, ‘Claribel Brown. What’s yours?’
‘Marc van Borsele. And now that we are introduced, I will come in with you and see to that foot.’
She saw then that he held a case in one hand. ‘You’re a doctor?’
‘Yes.’
There seemed no point in arguing with him. ‘Very well, though I’m perfectly able…’
‘Let us waste no more time in polite chat.’
Claribel opened the gate to the basement with rather more force than necessary and led the way down the worn steps to her front door. In the sombre light of the street lamp its paint shone in a vibrant red and there were tubs on either side, holding the hopeful green shoots of daffodils. She got out her key and had it taken from her and the door opened. He switched on the light, too, and then stood aside for her to enter.
There was a tiny lobby and an inner door leading to the living-room, small and perforce dark but very cosy. The furniture was mostly second-hand but had been chosen with care, and there was an out-of-date gas fire under the narrow mantelshelf. The one easy chair was occupied by two cats, one black and white, one ginger, curled up together. They unrolled themselves as Claribel went in, muttered softly at her, and curled up again.
‘Do come in,’ said Claribel unnecessarily, for he was already right behind her.
They stood for a moment and studied each other. Claribel was a pretty girl, almost beautiful with golden hair drawn back rather too severely into a knot, green eyes and a straight nose above a generous mouth. She was tall and magnificently built and looked a good deal younger than her twenty-eight years.
She stared back at her companion, frowning faintly because he was staring even harder. He was well over six feet, she supposed, and big with huge shoulders. He was also good-looking in a formidable way, with dark hair, sprinkled with grey, an aggressive nose, a firm thin mouth and dark eyes. He might be any age between thirty-five and forty, she guessed, and he had a nice taste in dress: conservative but elegant.
‘Be good enough to take off your tights or whatever and let me see that foot.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘I can spare five minutes.’
The arrogance of the man! Someone should take him in hand, Claribel thought as he turned to undo his case. She whipped off her tights, sat down on a small upright chair and held her foot out.
There was more mud and blood; he poked and prodded, remarked that she would have a bruised foot but nothing worse and suggested that she should wash it. ‘That’s if you have a bathroom?’
She bit back what she would liked to have said in reply and went through the door at the back of the room and shut it behind her. The bathroom was a pokey little place reached through her bedroom; she cleaned her foot and whisked back to find him standing before the watercolour hanging over the mantelpiece.
‘Your home?’ he wanted to know.
‘Yes.’
‘The west country?’
‘Yes.’ She had sat down and was holding her foot once more. ‘You said you had five minutes…’
He sat on his heels, used penicillin powder, gauze and strapping and then stood up. ‘You don’t like me,’ he observed.
‘I don’t know you. Thank you for your help. You were kind.’
‘I am not a particularly kind man.’ He closed his case and she opened the door and held out a nicely kept hand.
‘Goodbye, Dr van Borsele.’
He shook it briefly. ‘Goodbye. You live alone?’
She was surprised. ‘Yes. Well, there are Enoch and Toots…’
‘I trust that you don’t open your door to strangers or accept lifts from those you don’t know.’
Her pretty mouth dropped open. ‘Well! You insisted on bringing me home and here you are telling me…’ She strove to keep her voice at a reasonable level. ‘I never accept lifts and I certainly don’t open my door. Whatever do you take me for?’
‘The most beautiful girl I have seen for a long time.’ He didn’t smile. ‘Goodnight, Claribel.’
She bolted the door after him and stood listening to him driving away.
‘What an extraordinary man,’ she observed to her cats, ‘and much too sure of himself.’
She went into the kitchenette and began to get her supper, all the while considering ways and means of deflating his arrogance. ‘I dare say he’s quite nice,’ she mused out loud, ‘once one gets beneath that cold manner. Perhaps he is crossed in love. Or unhappily married. And what’s he doing here in London if he’s Dutch?’
She dished up her omelette and sat down at the table in the living-room to eat it. ‘I wonder what he does? Private practice, or just on a visit, or at one of the hospitals?’
She finished her supper, fed the cats and washed up, turned on the gas fire and got out the sweater she was knitting, but somehow she couldn’t settle to it. Presently she bundled it up and took herself off to bed, where, to her annoyance, she lay awake thinking, much against her will, of the man she had met that evening. ‘A good thing we’ll not meet again,’ she observed to the cats curled up on the end of her bed, ‘for he’s too unsettling.’
It was still raining when she got up the next morning, dressed, breakfasted, fed the cats and tidied up her small flat. The physiotherapy department opened at nine o’clock and Miss Flute, who was in charge, had put her down to do a ward round with Mr Shutter, the orthopaedic consultant, at half past that hour. She needed to go through the notes before then.
The bus was jammed with damp passengers, irritable at that hour of the morning. Claribel wedged herself between a staid city gent and a young girl with purple hair arranged in spikes, and reviewed the day before her.
A busy one. Mr Shutter had the energy of two men and expected everyone to feel the same way; she had no doubt that by the end of his round she would have added more patients to the already overfull list Miss Flute brooded over each morning. Besides that, she had several patients of her own to deal with before lunch, and in the afternoon Mr Shutter had his out-patients clinic. It crossed her mind that she had more than her fair share of that gentleman; there were, after all, four other full-time physiotherapists as well as several who came in part-time. There were other consultants, too, milder, slower men that Mr Shutter, but somehow she always had him. Not that she minded; he was a youngish man, an out-of-doors type whose energy was very much in contrast to his broken-limbed patients, but he was kind to them and she had never minded his heartiness. Some of the girls she worked with found him intimidating, but it had never bothered her; she had a peppery man of the law for a father.
Jerome’s Hospital was old; it had been patched up from time to time and there were plans afoot to move it, lock, stock and barrel, to the outskirts of London, but the plans had been mooted so often, and just as often tidied away again, that it seemed likely to stay where it was, surrounded by its dingy streets, its walls grimed from the traffic which never ceased around it, its interior a maze of passages, splendid public rooms and inconvenient wards. Claribel, who had trained there and stayed on afterwards, surveyed its grim exterior as she got off the bus with a mixture of intense dislike and affection. She loved her work, she liked the patients and the people she worked with, but she deplored the endless corridors, the dimness of the various departments and the many annexes where it was so easy to get lost. Her kind heart went out to patients who, for the first time, arrived for treatment and wandered in bewilderment all over the place, despite the little signposts none of them ever saw, until someone took pity on them and showed them the way, to arrive, hot and flustered, late for their appointment.
Claribel wished the porter on duty a good morning and went down the short staircase at the back of the entrance hall. It led to a narrow passage used by the electricians, porters and those going to the theatre serving casualty; it was also a short cut to the physio department. She opened the door and went in with five minutes to spare.
Miss Flute was already there, a middle-aged, grey-haired lady with a sharp tongue and a soft heart who led her team with unflagging energy and didn’t suffer fools gladly. She smiled at Claribel as she wished her a brisk good morning. ‘A busy day,’ she observed. ‘There’s a huge out-patients.’
Claribel paused on her way to the cloakroom they all shared. ‘Are we all here?’ she asked.
‘No. Mrs Green phoned to say that she had a bad cold—we’ll have to share out her patients.’
Claribel got into her white overall, gave her reflection a perfunctory glance and went into the office to con the notes. It was indeed going to be a busy day.
The orthopaedic wing was right at the other end of the hospital and Mr Shutter was doing his rounds in both the men’s and women’s wards. Claribel poked her pretty head round Sister’s office door, announced her arrival and joined the social worker, a nurse burdened with charts and, at the last minute, Sister herself. Just in time, the ward doors swung open and Mr Shutter strode in, bringing with him a great rush of energy and fresh air. Also with him was the man who had given Claribel a lift on the previous evening.
Although she had thought about him a great deal, she hadn’t expected to see him again, but if she had she would have expected him to at least give some sign of recognition. As it was, his dark eyes looked right through her. She was conscious of annoyance. Of course, it wouldn’t have done at all to have spoken to her, but he could have smiled…
She took her place in the group surrounding Mr Shutter and the round started. There were sixteen patients in the ward but not all of them were having physio. It wasn’t until they reached the fourth bed that Mr Shutter said, ‘Claribel, how’s this leg shaping? Is it going to need much more massage? It looks pretty good to me.’ He glanced at the man beside him.
‘What do you think, Marc?’ He didn’t wait for an answer. ‘This is one of our physiotherapists, Claribel Brown. Claribel, Mr van Borsele has joined us for a period—he’ll be taking over for a week or two while I’m away. Well, what do you think, Marc?’ Mr van Borsele had barely glanced at her; only by the slight nod of his handsome head had he acknowledged that she was there. He studied the limb at some length, smiled nicely at the young man lying in the bed and said, ‘Might Miss Brown put this lad through his paces? There’s considerable muscle wastage.’
He and Mr Shutter studied the X-rays and they watched Claribel as she exercised the boy’s fractured leg; it had been taken out of the plaster, the pin taken from the knee and the extension removed only days before, but thanks to her daily visits there was quite a lot of movement. Of course there was muscle wastage, she reflected silently. If Mr van Borsele should ever break one of his legs and she had the task of exercising it… She looked up to catch his dark eyes upon her and a knowing light smile curled his lip. So he read people’s thoughts, too, did he?
By a great effort of will she managed not to blush.
The round wound to a close and presently she was able to leave the ward, armed with a great many instructions, and make her way back to the physio department. The waiting-room was full but it always was: people waiting patiently for their turn, holding crutches or walking aids, nursing arms in slings. She uttered a general good morning and went through to the office where Miss Flute was on the phone—admonishing someone severely by the sound of it. She put the receiver down and remarked, ‘I have very little patience with some people. Well, I suppose you’ve collected another bunch of patients. Your Mrs Snow is waiting.’ She studied Claribel’s face. ‘Have a cup of coffee first. Heaven knows when you’ll get another chance.’
Claribel sipped thankfully. ‘Five more—two discharges to come here three times a week and three on the ward—all extensions. There’s a new man taking over from Mr Shutter—did you know?’
‘Met him yesterday. Dutch—well thought of, I believe. A bit terse, I thought.’
Claribel put down her empty mug. ‘I’ll say. Mr Shutter introduced us; he looked right through me.’
Miss Flute said drily, ‘How could that be possible?’
Claribel frowned. She was a sensible girl, aware that she had more than her share of good looks, and she was accustomed to people remarking on that, but she had no vanity and was quite uncaring of the admiring glances she drew. All the same, for some reason Mr van Borsele’s lack of interest in her had irked her. ‘Perhaps he hates blondes…or he’s a misogynist.’
Miss Flute gave a hoot of laughter. ‘My dear girl, the grapevine has it that he is out and about at all the best restaurants with various lovelies.’
‘Good luck to him,’ said Claribel and went off in search of Mrs Snow. Mrs Snow was elderly, stout and chatty; Claribel rather liked her. She had tripped in her own kitchen and broken an arm and, having passed through Casualty, X-ray and Mr Shutter’s Out-patients, was now in the hands of the physio department. She was a chatty soul and at each session related an instalment of her home life while Claribel massaged her and egged her on to do the exercises she was so loath to do.
‘I seen a nice young man as I come in,’ she observed as Claribel began on the arm. ‘Getting out of ’is car, ’e was—one of them Rolls, ever so posh. ’E went into Outpatients.’
She fixed Claribel with a beady eye; having set a sprat to catch a mackerel, she was hopeful of a good catch.
‘He’s taking over from Mr Shutter for a week or two. You’re due to see him next week, aren’t you? Mr Shutter is having a holiday.’
‘’E deserves it. ’E must be sick ter death of other people’s bones.’ Mrs Snow cringed away from Claribel’s gentle fingers. ‘Ow, that ’urts. Is ’e nice, the new man?’
‘I’m sure he will be very good at his job,’ said Claribel sedately. ‘Now, Mrs Snow, let me see you lift that arm.’
The day wore on with its unending stream of patients. By five o’clock Claribel was bone-weary. Not that she minded; she liked her work and it was satisfying to see arms and legs returned to normal. Of course there was a hard core of elderlies with arthritis who were more or less permanently on the books, but they still benefited, even if they made little progress.
There was a general rush to go home once the last patient had gone, and a good deal of cheerful chatter since it was Friday and the department closed down until Monday morning. They left in a cheerful bunch, pausing to say goodbye to Miss Flute as she got into her Mini and then streaming across the hospital forecourt, intent on getting their various buses. Claribel, intent on getting home for the weekend, raced away to the nearest bus-stop, her mind already dwelling happily on the peace and quiet of her parents’ home in Wiltshire, so that she failed to see Mr van Borsele’s Rolls at the entrance, waiting to join the rush of traffic in the street. She had in fact forgotten all about him.
She went home once a month, an undertaking which called for a strict routine the moment she got into her flat. Shower and change, feed the cats, stow them in their travelling basket, snatch up her already packed weekend bag and get a taxi, not always easy, especially in her unfashionable corner of London. Waterloo station wasn’t all that distance away, but too far to walk with the cats and her bag, and this evening she was later than usual.
She reached the end of Meadow Road and not a taxi in sight, although there was more chance of one in Stamford Street. She paused on the corner by the few rather tatty shops and looked hopefully in either direction. Traffic streamed past but every taxi was occupied; she would have to try for a bus if one came along, although the nearest stop to the station was several minutes away from the station itself.
She didn’t see the Rolls, going the other way, slow, do a U-turn and slide to a halt beside her.
‘Get in quickly,’ begged Mr van Borsele, ‘I’m breaking any number of regulations.’ He had nipped out smartly, taken the basket from her and put it on the back seat, and hurried her round the car into the seat beside his. ‘Where to?’
Claribel caught her breath. ‘Waterloo Station. My goodness, you do pop up in unexpected places, don’t you?’ She added quickly, like a small girl who had forgotten her manners, ‘Thank you very much. I haven’t much time to catch my train.’
Mr van Borsele grunted and joined the steady stream of traffic, weaving in and out of slower vehicles in a rather unnerving fashion.
‘You’re going very fast,’ Claribel pointed out severely.
He said irritably, ‘I was under the impression that you wished to catch a train, or was that just an excuse to get a lift?’
Claribel drew such a deep breath she almost exploded.
‘Well, of all the nerve…’ She remembered suddenly to whom she was speaking; one showed a proper respect towards consultant surgeons. ‘You stopped the car and told me to get in.’
‘Indeed I did. I don’t remember inviting you to criticise my driving.’
She gave his unfriendly profile an almost motherly look. He was touchy; had a tiff with his girlfriend, perhaps. With a brother only a few years younger than herself she was familiar with the sudden snappish reply.
She said reasonably, ‘I’m not criticising you at all, Mr van Borsele—I’m very grateful to you.’
He grunted again. Hardly a sparkling conversationalist, she reflected, and prepared to get out as he pulled in at the station’s main entrance. She still had almost ten minutes but there would be a queue for tickets. She had a hand on the door handle when he said, ‘Wait,’ and got out and opened the door, retrieving the cats and her bag from the back of the car and strode into the station. Outside the vast ticket office he asked, ‘Where to?’
‘Oh, Tisbury.’ She put out a hand for the basket and her bag and found she was holding them both and watching his vast back disappearing into the queue. Her protesting, ‘Mr van Borsele,’ fell on deaf ears.
He was back within five minutes, which left three minutes to get on to the train. He took the cats and her bag from her, bustled her past the platform gate, found her an empty seat opposite two respectable matrons, put the cats on the floor beside her with her bag on the rack, wished her a coldly polite goodbye and had gone while she was on the point of thanking him yet again. She remembered then that he had paid for her ticket and she had forgotten to repay him. What must he think of her? She went pink at the thought and the matrons eyed her with interest, no doubt scenting romance.
She would have to pay him when she got back on Monday; better still, she could put the money in the consultant’s letter rack with a polite note. Not that he deserved any politeness. Not a man to do things by halves, she mused as the train gathered speed between the rows of smoke-grimed houses; she had been handled as efficiently as an express parcel. And with about as much interest.
She occupied the train journey composing cool observations to Mr van Borsele when next they met, calculated to take him down a peg.
Less than two hours later she was on the platform at Tisbury station being hugged by her father and then hurried to the family car, an elderly estate car in constant use, for he was a solicitor of no mean repute and much in demand around the outlying farms and small estates. Enoch and Toots were settled in the back with Rover, the family labrador, and Mr Brown, without loss of time, drove home.
His family had lived in the same house for some considerable time. It was a typical dwelling of the district: mellowed red brick, an ancient slate roof and plenty of ground round it. A roomy place, with a stable converted to a garage and a couple of rather tumbledown sheds to one side, it stood a mile outside the little town, its garden well tended. It had never had a name but was known locally as Brown’s place.
Its owner shot up the short drive and Claribel jumped out to fling open the door and hurry inside, leaving her father to bring in the animals. Mrs Brown came out of the kitchen as she went in; a smaller version of Claribel, her fair hair thickly silvered but with a still pretty face.
Mother and daughter embraced happily and Claribel said: ‘Oh, it’s marvellous to be home again. What’s for supper?’
‘My potato soup, shepherd’s pie and upside-down pineapple pudding.’ She eyed her daughter. ‘Been working hard, darling? We’ll have a glass of sherry, shall we? Here’s your father.’
Enoch and Toots were used to their weekend trips; they ate the food put ready for them and sat themselves down before the Aga while Rover settled close by and Claribel and her parents sat at the kitchen table drinking their sherry and catching up on the news.
‘Sebastian has a new girlfriend,’ said Mrs Brown. ‘She’s a nurse, not finished her training yet. He brought her down for the weekend—we like her, but of course he’s young yet…’
‘He’s been qualified for a year, Mother.’
‘Yes, dear, I know, but he seems so much younger than you.’
‘Well, he is—three years, almost.’
There was a small silence. Claribel had had her share of young men but she had never been serious with any one of them; her mother, without saying a word, nevertheless allowed her anxiety to show. Her beautiful daughter was twenty-eight years old and it was inconceivable that she wouldn’t marry. Each time Claribel went home, her mother contrived to bring the talk round to the young men she had met and always Claribel disappointed her.
To change the trend of her parent’s obvious thoughts, Claribel said cheerfully, ‘I almost missed the train. Luckily the orthopaedic man who is standing in for Mr Shutter happened to drive past and gave me a lift.’
‘Nice?’ asked her mother hopefully.
‘No. Very terse and rude. He’s Dutch.’
‘What does he… Is he nice-looking?’ asked Mrs Brown.
‘Very. In an arrogant sort of way.’
‘I don’t see that his looks matter as long as he got Claribel to the station. Very civil of him,’ observed her father.
He hadn’t been civil, but Claribel let that pass. She finished her sherry and they went across the stone-flagged hallway to the dining-room, handsomely furnished in a shabby way with massive pieces inherited from her mother’s family. The talk was all of local events while they ate and when they had washed up and had coffee, Claribel took herself off to bed; it had been a long day, rather more tiring than usual.
‘I wonder what that Dutchman’s like?’ mused her mother over her knitting.
Mr Brown had a good book. ‘I don’t see that it matters; Claribel doesn’t like him.’
Mrs Brown did a row in silence. ‘We’ll see,’ she said. ‘She hadn’t a good word to say for him—a good sign.’
Her husband sighed. ‘Mr dear, how you do run on. Besides, he’s a consultant. Presumably hardly likely to take up with a physiotherapist.’
‘Claribel is beautiful,’ said her mother simply, as though that put an end to the argument.
The weekend went too fast; it always did. Claribel biked into Tisbury in the morning on various errands for her mother and to waste a good deal of time chatting with various friends she met there. In the afternoon she and her father took Rover for a walk along the bridle paths, which were short cuts leading to the villages around the little town. The weather had improved but it was wet underfoot. Claribel, in wellies, an old tweed skirt and an even older quilted jacket, had tied a scarf round her golden hair and borrowed her mother’s woolly gloves. They got back for tea glowing with fresh air.
Sunday morning was taken up with church and leisurely chats after the service. Claribel had a lot of friends, most of them married now, and several with weddings in the offing. She was to be a bridesmaid at two of them and wandered off into the churchyard with the brides-to-be, to sit on a handy tombstone and discuss clothes.
The day wasn’t too long enough. She collected Enoch and Toots, packed her bag and in the early evening was driven to Tisbury once more, very much inclined to agree with her mother’s remark that it was a pity that she couldn’t stay at home. But there was no hospital nearer than Salisbury and no vacancies there. Besides, she had to stand on her own two feet and make her own life. She might not marry; she had had chances enough but none of them had been right for her. She wasn’t sure what kind of man she wanted for a husband but she supposed that she would know when she met him.
Meadow Road looked more dingy than ever as the taxi drove down it, and her little semi-basement seemed unbearably small and dark even with all the lights on. She made tea, fed the cats and turned on the gas fire. She always felt like this when she came back after a weekend at home; in a day or two she would settle down.
She got out paper and envelopes, and wrote a stiff little note to Mr van Borsele, enclosing a cheque for her railway fare. In the morning she would take it to the lodge and ask a porter to put it in the pigeonholes reserved for the consultants and that would be the end of that.
She went to bed presently and fell asleep at once, to wake in the night and wish that it wouldn’t be the end; he was such a thoroughly unpleasant man that it would be a pleasure to reform him. She thought of several ways of doing this before she slept again.