TABITHA had regained her usual calm by the time Mr van Beek arrived on the ward the next day. She wished him good morning in a stony voice and pretended not to see his swift glance at the fiercely screwed-up bun beneath her starched cap. She led him firmly round the ward, speaking when spoken to and not otherwise, and then only on matters connected with her patients’ broken limbs. George Steele and Tommy looked at her first with astonishment and then frankly puzzled, and when George enquired, sotto voce, if she was sickening for something and had his head bitten off for his pains, they exchanged a bewildered look, for this wasn’t their good-natured Tabby at all. Only Mr van Beek, going impassively about his business, appeared oblivious of anything amiss. At Mr Bow’s bedside he paused for a minute after examining the leg exposed for his inspection.
‘You’re doing well, Knotty,’ he offered. ‘We’ll have you in a boat before the summer’s out, even if we do have to carry you.’
The old man smiled. ‘You were always a man to get your own way, Marius, so I’ll not contradict you.’ He sighed. ‘I must say it sounds tempting.’
‘Leave it to me,’ said Mr van Beek. ‘I have everything planned, even Podger.’
They all moved away, Tabitha wondering what the plans for Podger might be. It seemed she wasn’t to be told until Mr van Beek saw fit, which annoyed her to the point of frowning, and Mr Raynard snapped: ‘What’s bitten you, Tabby? Where’s all the womanly charm? You look as though you’re encased in metal armour plating. Wasn’t the weekend a success?’
She was about to answer this when Mr van Beek answered for her.
‘Miss Tabitha Crawley danced the lot of us into the floor,’ he remarked, ‘and looked delightful doing it too. What is more, she was up with the sun the next morning. I know, because I was up too, exercising my host’s dog. We met.’
He smiled at Tabitha, who stared woodenly back and uttered a brief and equally wooden ‘Yes’. But if she had hoped to discourage him from recalling the happenings of the weekend, she failed lamentably, for he went on to describe it in detail in a lazy, good-natured manner, even remarking upon the extreme good looks of Lilith.
‘A bit young,’ remarked Mr Raynard obscurely. ‘I met her mother once—terrifying woman, always smiling.’ He coughed and added hastily: ‘Sorry, Tabby—quite forgot. I’m sure she’s very—er—competent,’ he finished inadequately.
What at? wondered Tabitha, unless it’s making me out to be a halfwit with a face that ought to be veiled and no taste in clothes. She frowned again and changed it quickly into a smile because the men were looking at her.
‘Shall I get someone to bring your coffee in here?’ she enquired, a little haughty because they had all been staring so. ‘Unless there’s anyone else Mr van Beek wants to see.’
They agreed, still puzzled, because it had become the custom for them all to crowd into Tabitha’s office after a ward round and drink their coffee there, wreathed in pipe smoke and eating their way steadily through her week’s supply of biscuits. So Nurse Betts, a little mystified, took a tray into Mr Raynard’s cubicle, and presently Tabitha, drinking her own Nescafé while she wrestled with the off duty, listened to the hum of cheerful talk coming from his bedside. Someone was being very amusing, judging from the bellows of laughter. She gave up the off duty after a few minutes and went along to the linen cupboard to see if there were enough sheets. They were on the top shelf and she had climbed on to the shelf below the better to count them, when the door opened behind her. She froze, because the nursing staff were supposed to use the steps, not climb around the cupboard like monkeys, and whoever it was, Matron, or worse, Fanny Adams, the Assistant Matron, would point this out to her in the tone of voice used by someone who had discovered wrong-doing and felt justified in censuring it. She took a firmer grip on the upright of the top shelf and looked down behind her. Mr van Beek was lounging in the doorway, his hands in his pockets, watching her with interest. She waited for him to make the obvious remark about the steps and when he didn’t, felt compelled to say: ‘This is so much easier than those little steps. I thought you were Matron.’
‘Heaven forbid!’ he murmured gravely. ‘Come down, I want to talk to you.’
Tabitha stayed where she was. ‘I’m busy, sir, counting sheets.’ A sudden thought struck her. ‘Unless it’s urgent?’
‘It’s urgent,’ he said instantly.
‘Then I’ll come down,’ said Tabitha, to find herself instantly clasped round her waist and lifted to the ground. The linen room was small, a mere cupboard, and they were forced to stand very close. She put a hand to her cap and said a trifle anxiously: ‘Not Mr Bow…he was fine.’
‘And still is. Why did you run away?’
A question Tabitha didn’t wish to answer. She said instead: ‘It was urgent.’
‘I consider it urgent, and I should like an answer.’
She saw that she would have to give him one or stay imprisoned with the sheets and pillowcases for an unlimited period. She drew a breath and began quietly: ‘I don’t want to be pitied. To be compared with Lilith and then pitied is more than I can stand—it makes me bad-tempered and envious and I try not to be, and then you come along and stir me up.’
‘Good,’ said Mr van Beek with lazy satisfaction.
Tabitha flashed him a cross look and found his eyes, very calm and clear, contemplating her. Her voice throbbed with the beginnings of temper. ‘It’s nothing of the sort. I’ve made a life for myself; I’ve a home and Meg and a job that I can keep for the rest of my life.’
‘God forbid!’ interposed Mr van Beek with deep sincerity, and when she gaped at him he added: ‘No, no—I don’t mean that you’re not a splendid nurse—you are, but there are other things. You seem to think you’re not entitled to any of them.’
She made a small sound, half snort, half sigh. ‘You’re not a girl.’
His lips twitched. ‘No—meaning that I am unable to understand?’
‘Yes,’ said Tabitha baldly, ‘that’s exactly what I do mean. And now if there’s nothing more you want to say, I think I should get on with my work.’
His eyes twinkled. ‘Shall I lift you up, since I lifted you down?’
She shook her head and he turned away from the door and then paused to ask:
‘Would it be possible to do the Wednesday round half an hour earlier? That beguiling young sister of yours has teased me into taking her to Torquay, and if I could get away by eleven…’
Tabitha fought a violent desire to burst into tears, box Mr van Beek’s ears and find Lilith at once and do her some injury. She was still feeling surprise at her strong feelings as she said stonily: ‘That will be perfectly all right, sir,’ and stood waiting for him to go, and when he saw that she wasn’t going to say anything more, he said: ‘Well, goodbye.’ He stretched out a large, well-shaped hand and touched her hair lightly.
‘Still determined to be Cinderella?’ he enquired as he went.
Tabitha prayed wickedly for a cyclone, a terrific thunderstorm, or just a steady downpour of rain, starting just before eleven o’clock on Wednesday, but the faint promise of rain on Tuesday evening had evaporated before a clear blue sky when she went on duty the following morning, and by the time the round began the sun was blazing down from a cloudless sky, justifying Mr van Beek’s elegant summer suiting and beautiful silk shirt.
Tabitha, handing X-rays and reports and whisking bedclothes off plastered arms and legs, wondered where he would take Lilith. There was an hotel in Torquay famed for its food—she couldn’t remember its name, but she felt sure that that was where Lilith would expect to go, and no doubt Mr van Beek would spend his money very freely indeed just for the pleasure of having such a pretty girl for his companion. She scowled fiercely at Mr Prosser, who was so taken by surprise that for once he was left speechless.
The round was businesslike, and although Mr van Beek did all that was expected of him by each of the patients, he wasted no time on unnecessary chatter. Even Mr Bow received only the briefest of remarks and when they reached Mr Raynard, that gentleman besought his friend not to hang around; he was doing nicely enough, and unless Tabby chose to kill him off in the meantime, he would still be there on the following day. As the party moved towards the door Tabitha spoke.
‘You would rather not wait for coffee, I expect, Mr van Beek.’ She went through the door into the office ahead of the others and turned to smile bleakly at him. ‘I hope you have a very pleasant day,’ she added insincerely, and smiled warmly at George Steele and Tommy, indicating with a little nod the coffee tray ready on her desk. Mr van Beek paused for the smallest moment of time, his eyebrows lifted. Then his eyes narrowed.
He said smoothly: ‘Thank you. The pleasures of the day will doubtless make up for the lack of coffee now.’
He stalked away and Tabitha watched him go, feeling wretched and miserable because he had seemed to mind so much, and excusing her own bad temper as concern that a man as nice as he was should fall for someone like Lilith. She attempted to throw off the peculiar sense of loss she was sustaining by being extra bright and chatty to George and Tommy, leaving them even more puzzled. They went away presently, shaking their heads over her, for they liked her very much, having a brotherly fondness for her which allowed them to appreciate her good points without noticing her plain face.
The day dragged; Tabitha took an afternoon off duty so that Staff Nurse Rogers could have a half day—Mrs Burns, the part-time staff nurse, would stay until five o’clock. She went home to the flat and helped Meg turn out cupboards, then sat idly with Podger on her lap, trying not to think about Lilith and Mr van Beek. Sunbathing, she supposed, or having tea on the terrace of some hotel and then later, dinner and a drive back in the moonlight. She found her imagination unbearable and got up so quickly that Podger let out a protesting miaouw and only allowed his ruffled feelings to be soothed by a saucer of milk and the small portions of sandwich with which he was fed when Meg came in with the tea.
‘A nice beast,’ observed Meg, ‘makes a bit of life about the place. You haven’t told me about the dance, Miss Tabby.’
‘Well,’ said Tabitha, ‘it wasn’t all that exciting—not for me, anyway.’ She explained about not wearing the new dress and Meg tut-tutted in a comforting voice.
‘Never you mind, child,’ she consoled. ‘You’ll get the chance to wear it, you see if you don’t.’
‘Yes, I know. The Christmas Ball at the hospital. Even though I’ve never worn it, it’ll seem old, if you see what I mean.’ She looked at her watch. ‘I must fly, Meg dear, I’m a bit short-handed this evening, so don’t worry if I’m late.’
But on the whole, it was a quiet evening. There had been an admission, it was true, which had gone straight to theatre to have a broken arm put in plaster, but the patient would go home again very soon and presented no great strain on the ward staff. There were a couple of men admitted for laminectomy for the following day too, but they were allowed to sit in the day room, watching the television with anyone else who could manage to get as far, and the remaining patients were quiet enough. Even Mr Raynard, deep in a thriller, gave less trouble than he usually did. He had been sat out for a short period during the day, and so had old Mr Bow; they had faced each other across the ward, their legs carefully propped up before them, while they boasted to each other how soon they would be on their feet again, and while Mr Bow didn’t exactly smirk with satisfaction when Tabitha did her evening round, he certainly seemed to have taken on a new lease of life, a fact which Mr Raynard noted when she reached his bed.
‘Nice old fellow,’ he commented, ‘clear as a bell on top too—splendid brain, I shouldn’t wonder. We must have a chat some time.’ Tabitha forbore from pointing out to him that they had been shouting to each other for most of the afternoon and took this as a strong hint that they should be arranged within normal talking distance of each other. ‘You shall sit together tomorrow,’ she promised. ‘I don’t see why you shouldn’t have a wheelchair, but we’d better wait until Mr van Beek comes—he’ll be in early to look at those two laminectomies.’
‘If he’s back in time,’ commented Mr Raynard darkly, to which remark Tabitha made no reply, for there was none to make.
The evening was fading before the pale moon as she reached home, and although she was tired she thought how nice it would be to go out for an hour, out of the city and into the country, or perhaps take the coast road to the sea, preferably in a Bentley. She opened the flat door and called to Meg as she always did, and Meg came to the kitchen door and said in a faintly scolding voice: ‘There you are at last—I’ve just popped something on a tray in the sitting room for you. You go in and have it straight away.’
‘Why can’t I have it in the kitchen with you?’ demanded Tabitha, and Meg gave her a strange look and said: ‘All right, Miss Tabby, you go and fetch it if you’d like that better.’ She turned away. ‘I’m busy.’
The sitting room looked pretty; there was a small lamp lighted on the little table by the fireplace and a tray set invitingly beside it. Opposite, in the winged armchair she had brought from Chidlake, sat Mr van Beek, looking very much at his ease. Tabitha stood just inside the door, watching him unfold his length, conscious of a peculiar sensation at the sight of him and quite unable to think of anything to say. It was a relief when he asked mildly: ‘You don’t mind, I hope? Lilith asked me to call and give you these.’
He indicated a large box of chocolates which Tabitha stared at unbelievingly, rather in the manner of one confronted by a deadly serpent.
‘Chocolates—from Lilith? Why?’
He laughed a little. ‘I imagine she thought you might like them,’ he murmured. ‘Aren’t you going to sit down and eat your sandwiches?’
She sat down and saw that there were two cups on the tray.
So he expected coffee. She poured it out and handed him a cup and said at length:
‘How—how nice. I—it’s a bit unexpected.’
His eyes crinkled into laughter lines. ‘Unexpected presents are always nice. Have you been busy?’
‘Yes—no—not too bad. How—why—that is, you could have brought the chocolates with you tomorrow.’
A muscle twitched at the corners of his mouth. ‘I had plenty of time to spare. Lilith met some of her young friends in Torquay, they asked us to join them for dinner. She thought it might be rather pleasant. After all, to come back early in the evening as I had warned her we should have to do was a tame ending to the day in face of dancing until all hours.’
Tabitha bit into a sandwich, and then, remembering her manners, offered him one.
‘She stayed—I can’t believe it!’ She looked at his quiet face and corrected herself. ‘Oh, I see. She thought you would stay despite the fact that you had said you had planned to return early. She must have been surprised.’
Mr van Beek said gently: ‘Er—yes, I believe so. I imagine she is a young lady who usually gets her own charming way.’ He gave her a sharp glance. ‘What are you thinking?’
‘How clever you are—none of Lilith’s young men stand a chance against you—none of them would have dared to cross her, it will intrigue her. I expect you’re very experienced.’
She looked up and found him laughing silently. His voice was bland.
‘Probably. How’s Podger?’
Tabitha had gone a little red in the face because he had snubbed her, gently it was true, but a snub all the same, and she was sensitive to snubs. She discussed Podger’s well-being politely, and just as politely enquired if her companion would like more coffee, and when he declined asked: ‘What is to happen to Podger? Mr Bow is devoted to him. Have you—that is, do you know anywhere where they can be together?’
Mr van Beek got slowly to his large, well-shod feet. ‘Oh, yes, I’ve thought all that sort of thing out. I believe it will work very well. I’ll go, you must be tired and I didn’t intend to stay so long.’
Tabitha went to the door with him, seething silently because he had snubbed her for the second time. She thanked him once more for bringing the chocolates and added: ‘Please thank Lilith for me when you see her. I—I don’t go home very often, I’m sure you’ll see her before I shall.’
He nodded in a casual manner as he got into the Bentley. His goodbye was equally casual.
Meg eyed the almost untouched sandwiches which Tabitha took into the kitchen.
‘You’ve hardly eaten a thing, Miss Tabby. What a nice gentleman that was. I felt sure you would want him to stay until you got back from the hospital.’ She gave Tabitha an innocent look and Tabitha cried:
‘Meg, you didn’t say that! You didn’t persuade him to stay?’
Meg was indignant. ‘Of course not, love—he just said did I mind if he waited for you, and he looked so pleasant and friendly, I just couldn’t imagine anyone not wanting to talk to him. I didn’t do wrong, did I, love? Don’t you like him?’
Tabitha was at the sink and she didn’t turn round. ‘Yes, I like him very much, Meg,’ she said, and changed the subject quickly before Meg could ask any more questions.
It was later, as she got ready for bed, that she allowed herself to think about Mr van Beek’s visit and its reason. There was only one good answer—he wanted to get on good terms with her, so that he would have an ally to plead his cause if Lilith should prove capricious. Probably he didn’t realize that she and Lilith avoided each other as much as possible, and what reason had he for thinking so when Lilith asked him to deliver chocolates to her stepsister? She could hardly tell him that Lilith had sent them as a token of a triumph which she didn’t want Tabitha to miss. It was the kind of gibe in which she excelled, although he would have seen it as a thoughtful gesture from the girl he was attracted to, to a possible sister-in-law. She frowned at the thought; she didn’t want to be Mr van Beek’s sister-in-law, she wanted to be his wife: The knowledge of this exploded inside her head like a bomb and left her trembling. She said out loud with only Podger to hear: ‘I must be mad! Whatever induced me to…oh, Podger, what shall I do?’
Podger was asleep; as though she might get an answer from the mirror she went to it and stared at her reflection, which stared back at her, solemn-faced and sad. He had called her Cinderella; she hadn’t much liked it at the time, now it vexed her. She began to hunt through the dressing table drawers until she found what she sought—a beauty case the nurses had given her last Christmas and which her stepmother had advised her, quite kindly, not to make use of—as she had pointed out in her light, cold voice, Tabitha’s face was better without anything other than a little powder and lipstick, by which Tabitha understood her to mean that it was best not to draw too much attention to a plain face. So she had buried it away beneath a pile of undies and almost forgotten it, but now she opened it, poking among its contents and selecting them with experimental fingers. When she was satisfied with her choice, she fetched the current copy of Vogue, opened it at its beauty page, and started doing things to her face.
She was up half an hour earlier the next morning and spent the whole of that time before her mirror, where she repeated last night’s efforts to such good effect that when she went down to breakfast Meg gave her a long loving look and said at once: ‘That’s nice, Miss Tabitha. I like that bit of colour on your eyelids and that pretty lipstick. And your hair—that’ll look fine with your cap.’
Tabitha, gobbling toast, said uncertainly: ‘Really, Meg? It doesn’t look silly?’
‘My dear soul, you couldn’t look silly if you tried. You just go like that, all prettied up. It suits you.’
Thus encouraged, Tabitha swallowed her tea, hugged Meg with the enthusiasm of a small girl and departed for St Martin’s, to enter her ward shortly afterwards, feeling self-conscious until she encountered Nurse Betts’ surprised and admiring stare. All the same, she felt a little shy as she started her morning round, but she held her head high on her slender neck and although the patients stared, none of them voiced their surprise at her changed appearance; only the incorrigible Mr Prosser spoke up, and that in a voice loud enough for the entire ward to hear.
‘Well, ducks,’ he cried cheerfully, ‘I always said ’as ’ow you was a nice enough bird if yer let yourself go.’ To which remark Tabitha found no answer, so she asked him rather more severely than usual how he did, to which he replied that he did all the better for seeing her all perked up. It seemed prudent to nod her well-arranged top-knot and pass on to Mr Bow.
That old gentleman, beyond giving her a searching look, made no remark about her appearance; he was far too anxious to have a report on Podger, and she obliged him with this while she examined his plastered leg, peering at its little window to make sure all was well beneath it before feeling his toes. It was only as, satisfied as to his condition, she was moving away from the bed that he said:
‘They say that beauty is but skin deep; but there are other kinds of beauty than the obvious one, and they are vastly more important.’
Tabitha, who wasn’t sure if he was speaking to her or thinking out loud—a habit of the elderly, she had long ago discovered—said gently: ‘Yes, I daresay you’re right, Mr Bow,’ and went to say good morning to Mr Raynard who, as usual at that early hour, was feeling bad-tempered. He grumbled ‘morning’ at her without bothering to look up, but when she bent over his leg and said in her composed voice: ‘I should think you might be allowed to do more weight-bearing exercises soon’, he glanced at her and then, after a first long stare, remarked: ‘Well, well, Tabby, you’ve been at the paint-pot.’
‘If you mean,’ said Tabitha with dignity, ‘that I’ve used rather more make-up than usual, I have.’ She gave him an anxious glance. ‘Does it look awful?’ she wanted to know.
He studied her carefully. ‘No—you look different, but it suits you.’
‘What suits who?’ asked Mr van Beek from the doorway. Tabitha hadn’t expected him, at least, not until after the list that morning. There were several patients—two of them the laminectomies admitted the day before, now lying very quiet and clean in their theatre gowns, awaiting the telephone call which would send them on their way, each in his turn, to the operating table. But before this could happen, Mr van Beek needed to be there, scrubbed and waiting for them. As it was, he was leaning against the end of Mr Raynard’s bed, looking so idle and elegant that it was hard to imagine that in half an hour he would be stooping over a supine body, working with meticulous care on that same body’s spinal column. Tabitha peeped at him from under her eyelashes; she thought he looked as though he intended doing nothing more strenuous than taking a stroll round the nearest park. He looked up quickly and caught her peeping and held her glance with a bright one of his own which was so searching that she reddened painfully under it, wondering what he was going to say, but when he did speak it was about something quite different.
‘I’ve arranged for Mr Bow’s things to be collected this evening— I suppose you wouldn’t be so kind as to come with me and see them off the premises?’ he added vaguely. ‘If anything were to get broken or lost,’ and then still more vaguely, ‘witnesses, you know.’
It sounded reasonable enough, and even if it hadn’t been she was well aware that she would have jumped at the chance to be with him on even such a prosaic errand as this one. She said pleasantly:
‘Yes, all right. I’m off at six, if that’s OK.’
He nodded and turned away, lifting a vague hand in greeting and farewell to Mr Raynard. At the door he said in a businesslike way: ‘I had a look at those two laminectomies last night, the first one— Butt, isn’t it? seems straightforward; I’m not sure about Mr Dennis, though, I fancy he’ll prove to be difficult. I thought you might like to know so that you can deploy your staff accordingly.’ He gave her a brisk nod as he went out of the door.
He was right, the second case held everything else up, so that the list dragged to a close at tea time; by then Tabitha was wishing her day at an end, what with Matron’s round, the physiotherapists and visitors and Mrs Jeffs not coming because the children had measles, she was beginning to wish that she hadn’t promised to accompany Mr van Beek that evening. She spent her tea break re-doing her face and hair at the cost of a second cup, so that by the time she had given Rogers the report and was ready to leave, she was both hungry and thirsty, and in consequence, a little peevish as well.
She hadn’t seen Mr van Beek all day; she didn’t count his hasty visit to the ward to see his first two cases after dinner, before theatre started its afternoon session, for the only conversation they had had concerned the patients. She went along to the car park, convinced that he wouldn’t be there, and found that he was. He settled her beside him and as if he sensed her mood, talked with sympathy about their busy day until he drew up outside Mr Bow’s lodgings.
No one came when he knocked on the door; he knocked again and stood back to look at the curtained windows. ‘There should be someone at home,’ he observed, and in the small silence which followed Tabitha exclaimed: ‘There is—at least, there’s a funny noise.’
They listened. The noise was faint and irregular, and it was Mr van Beek who said: ‘I believe it is someone calling for help, do you?’
Tabitha didn’t answer; her nose twitched, she said urgently: ‘I can smell something burning.’
She looked at the calm face of the man standing beside her, waiting for him to do something. When he said: ‘Give me a hairpin, Tabitha,’ she did so without question and watched silently while he picked the lock of the front door, opened it, handed her back her pin, and went inside with her closely at his heels. There was no one in the first room they entered—a sitting room, rather cold and stiff, with unused furniture and a great many artificial flowers in monstrous glass vases; nor was there anyone in the poky little room behind it, which unlike its neighbour was very much lived in, with a large bed against one wall, the remains of a meal on the table, an oppressively large television dominating the room from one corner, and a highly decorative wallpaper which was in direct variance with the carpet. They closed the door with relief and went to the kitchen, where they found the landlady lying on the floor. She appeared to be semi-conscious, but opened her eyes and said ‘Help’ before closing them again. She looked pale and her hair was sticky with blood.
Mr van Beek got down on one knee beside her and gently tried out her arms and legs before picking her up and carrying her into the little back room and laying her on the bed. He said matter-of-factly, ‘My bag’s in the car, I’ll fetch it—see if you can find out where the fire is.’
Tabitha went back into the kitchen where the smell was stronger. It was a small room with so many built-in cupboards that there was barely room to turn round to get anything out of them. One of the cupboard doors stood open though, and inside, down among the sugar and tea and flour, was a smouldering cigarette. The fire was still in its embryo stage, but the sugar had caught, which was why the smell was so pungent. Tabitha hauled out the groceries, put the cigarette and the smouldering sugar in the sink and went to join Mr van Beek. He was examining the woman’s head and said without looking up: ‘There’s a torch in my bag—shine it here, there’s a good girl.’
There were two cuts, not very deep, but like all scalp wounds, bleeding freely. ‘A couple of stitches,’ murmured Mr van Beek. ‘You’ll find some scissors in my case. Cut away the hair, will you— I’ll give her a local.’
Tabitha did as she was bid and then went into the kitchen to see what he was doing. ‘A saucepan,’ he murmured, ‘to boil up the needleholder and so forth—I can’t see one.’
Tabitha started on the cupboards; at the third she produced one and put it on to boil, took the instruments from him, popped them in, put the lid on with a satisfied little clash and said: ‘I wonder if there’s a bathroom where you can wash your hands?’
He was prowling round, looking for a clean towel. ‘I’ll manage at the sink—how hard it is to find even the most commonplace things in other people’s houses.’
‘Yes,’ Tabitha agreed, ‘and do take off that jacket, you may get blood on it.’
She went back to have a look at their patient and found her with her eyes open. ‘Oh, lor’,’ said the landlady in a puzzled voice, ‘whatever’s ’appened?’
‘You must have fallen down,’ said Tabitha, ‘and bumped your head. It’s cut a little, the doctor will see to it for you.’
‘I didn’t send for no doctor.’
‘No,’ explained Tabitha, ‘we came to see about Mr Bow’s things, and Mr van Beek heard you calling and we came in.’ She thought it best not to mention the picked lock at that moment. ‘He’s in the kitchen, boiling some things.’
‘My ’ead! What things?’
Tabitha was saved from explanation by Mr van Beek’s entry, carrying the saucepan and a small pudding basin, and she made haste to clear a small table of its potted plant and carry it to the bedside, where she spread it with the day’s newspaper. Mr van Beek arranged his saucepan to his satisfaction, requested that the bowl should be filled with Savlon solution and swabs, and departed again, presumably to scrub his hands in the sugar-filled sink.
The landlady didn’t care about having her head stitched; she said so with a good deal of vehemence, jerking her head about in such a fashion that Tabitha was hard put to it to keep it steady while Mr van Beek inserted first the local anaesthetic and then the stitches. When he had finished, he warned her that her headache would trouble her for several days, produced some tablets for her relief, and set about clearing up while Tabitha arranged a bandage around the sufferer’s head.
‘Is there anyone coming home?’ she enquired. ‘It might be a good idea if you went to bed.’ She looked doubtfully at the television and wondered if going to bed in that room would make an atom of difference. ‘Somewhere quiet?’ she ventured.
‘There’s a put-u-up in the front room. My old man’ll be ’ome in a minute, ’e’ll see to it.’ She was interrupted by the thunderous knock on the door. ‘That’ll be the moving men.’
Mr van Beek came soft-footed into the room and Tabitha got to her feet.
‘Let them in, there’s a good girl,’ he begged. ‘Take them up to Knotty’s room, will you, while I find out how this good soul cut her head and who her doctor is—I think she’ll be all right now. Whoever he is, I’ll warn him and he can visit tomorrow.’
There wasn’t much to do in Mr Bow’s room. The men appeared to know exactly what was required of them; she signed some papers, went through the cupboards and drawers once more, and returned downstairs where Mr van Beek was waiting.
In the car he asked. ‘Home?’ and when she said, ‘Yes, please,’ went on, ‘I’m sorry about that, but I was glad to have you with me; if I’d been on my own I daresay I should have still been looking for a saucepan. The odds and ends were safely collected?’
Tabitha said yes, they were and sat silent until he stopped outside the flat, to stay sitting quietly beside her, making no attempt to open the door. She was searching for something to say and had her hand on the door when he said, his voice plaintive: ‘I’ve had no tea.’
Tabitha, who had been sitting in a dim world of her own dreaming, became at once practical. He might not care a row of beans for her, but that was no reason for refusing him a meal. She said, her pretty voice motherly, as though he were one of her patients: ‘Come in and have some now, and I’m sure Meg will have a cake or some sandwiches.’
He agreed with an alacrity which she hadn’t quite expected and they were in the flat’s tiny hall before she had had time to decide if she had been foolish to ask him or not. But Meg had no qualms at all, for when she heard that their visitor had gone tea-less, she bustled them both into the sitting room with the promise of a suitable meal within a brace of shakes, which promise she carried out very rapidly with Tabitha’s help. Presently the two of them sat down to boiled eggs, bread, jam and thick, rich cream and a very large seedcake, with Meg pouring the tea and listening to their reason for being late and making her wise, rather dry comments as they told her, and finally wanting to know if the nice old gentleman’s things had been safely disposed of.
Mr van Beek removed the top of his third egg with surgical expertise.
‘Oh yes, Meg, they’re safe and sound until such time as he should need them again, which won’t, I hope, be long. I shall take him back home with me until I start my lecture tour and after that we must see.’
The conversation became general after that, and when Meg went back into the kitchen to wash up he showed no sign of getting up to go, but asked instead if he might smoke and then sat back in the only chair large enough to accommodate him in comfort, and talked at some length about a new type of artificial hip joint he was interested in. And Tabitha, listening intelligently and making the right comments at the right times, wondered what it was about her that encouraged him to continue upon such a dull topic—her ability to listen, perhaps, which was something she had noticed that pretty girls didn’t need to do, and her dislike of hurting people’s feelings by not being interested. She should, she supposed, be grateful to be given the chance to hold even such a dry conversation as this one with him. She tried to imagine Lilith in her place and wondered what she would have done to divert him to some lighter topic, but of course he would never have started on it in the first place if it had been Lilith. Mr van Beek said suddenly, making her jump guiltily:
‘Why do I bore you with all this? But I told you did I not, that you are a very restful woman, and what is more, you look interested.’
‘Oh, I am,’ said Tabitha mendaciously, and jumped again when he went on.
‘I’m glad to see that you’ve stopped playing the Cinderella, and very nice you look too. Does it take very long?’
She gave him a suspicious look to make sure he wasn’t mocking her, but his face was grave and enquiring; he really wanted to know.
‘Well, I get up half an hour earlier than usual, but I expect I shall get quicker.’ She drew a breath, then: ‘Have you—have you seen Lilith?’
He looked surprised. ‘No—was I supposed to? I’ve not had time, for one thing, have I? I daresay I shall run into her at the weekend, for I shall be with the Johnsons at Lyme. Do you want me to give her a message?’
He hadn’t asked her if she was going to Lyme; she fought disappointment at his lack of interest and said steadily: ‘No, thank you— I—I just asked.’
But his next question sent her spirits soaring. ‘When do you intend to go to Chidlake?’ he wanted to know.
‘I—that is, I don’t often go, not any more.’
His voice was gentle. ‘Isn’t it your home?’
She didn’t look at him. ‘It belongs to my stepmother now.’ She had tried to make her voice light and when he said; ‘Tabitha,’ looked at him with a determined smile. He bent his head before she could draw back and kissed her cheek, and she thought she detected pity in his eyes before he dropped their lids, but she couldn’t be sure. He said on a little laugh:
‘Isn’t it time the prince came along with the glass slipper, my dear girl?’
‘I don’t know any princes.’ Her voice was sour and he ignored her remark, still smiling. ‘What a lot of Tabithas there are,’ he mused. ‘Efficient Tabitha on the ward, outdoor Tabitha on the Cobb, kind Tabitha coming to Knotty’s aid, Tabitha in moonlight and—er—cross Tabitha.’
She had to laugh. ‘I’m not cross, only you say things…’
‘Just as long as you listen,’ he answered blandly, and got up to go.
She stood where he had left her until Meg came from the kitchen to rouse her from her thoughts with a prosaic: ‘Now, now, Miss Tabitha, daydreaming again, and you promised you’d run up and see Mrs Diment about that bathroom drain.’
‘So I did,’ said Tabitha without any enthusiasm at all; her landlady was a pleasant enough person but given to a nice chat at any time of the day. She didn’t want to go; she would have preferred to stay just where she was, thinking about Marius van Beek. She said for the second time: ‘So I did,’ and went unwillingly out of the front door of the little flat and up the stairs to Mrs Diment’s own flat.
She saw quite a lot of Mr van Beek during the next few days, but on none of these occasions did he give any sign that he remembered any part of their conversation; he was polite, pleasantly friendly even, but their talk was confined to patients and their bones, so that by the end of the week Tabitha began to wonder if her stepmother was right after all, and it was indeed a waste of time trying to improve her looks. She went off duty on Saturday evening, glad that she had changed her day off with Rogers who wanted to go to a wedding on the Monday. All the week she had gone on duty eager to see Marius van Beek; perhaps a day away from hospital with no chance of seeing him at all would bring her to her senses. Meg would be going to her sister’s, she would have the flat to herself. She spent the short journey thinking of all the things she could do. Sunday loomed, inexpressibly dull, before her.
Meg’s sister lived in Ottery St Mary. Tabitha ran her there in the Fiat after an early breakfast and then went back to the flat. It was going to be a delightful day, warm even for summer, with a vivid blue sky which made Tabitha disinclined for any of the chores she had told herself she would do. Nevertheless, she got her bucket and suds and cloths and started to clean the car; a job she detested but which was long overdue. She had been working without much enthusiasm for ten minutes or so when the Bentley crept up noiselessly behind her and Mr van Beek, looking cool and elegant and lazier than ever, stepped out and strolled towards her. Tabitha dropped the sponge back into the bucket with a tremendous splash and said with artificial calm:
‘Good morning. I thought you were at the Johnsons’.’
‘Hullo. Yes, I am…’ before he could go on she said quickly, without thinking: ‘Lilith’s not home.’
He half smiled at some secret joke she felt she wasn’t sharing. ‘No, she isn’t. I wondered if you would like a day out. I feel like a breath of sea air. I hope you do too.’
So that was it, thought Tabitha; Lilith had refused to spend the day with him and the next best thing was herself, because she was after all Lilith’s stepsister and one of the family—or so he imagined. What more natural than for a man to cultivate the good offices of his future sister-in-law? She spent a few anxious moments warring with her pride, knowing that the battle was lost before she had offered herself even the mildest of reasons as to why she should refuse. She said amiably:
‘Yes, that would be nice, but I’m in the middle of doing this.’
He held out a hand and took the sponge from her. ‘Go and fetch whatever you swim in,’ he advised. ‘I’ll finish this for you. I suppose there isn’t any coffee?’
She turned at the door. ‘By the time you’re done, it’ll be ready,’ she promised.
He was putting the final polish to the roof of the car when she returned. In twenty minutes or so she had not only made coffee but changed her dress, re-done her hair and touched up her face, as well as finding a beach bag and her swimsuit. She packed it rather impatiently, because only that week she had intended to buy herself a bikini, something rather dashing and colourful, and somehow hadn’t got around to it. Now she would have to wear her last year’s swimsuit—not, she assured herself, that it would make a scrap of difference what she wore.
‘Coffee’s ready!’ she called, and as he came towards her with the bucket in one hand, ‘Thank you, Mr van Beek.’
He stopped short in front of her. ‘I know it wouldn’t be quite the thing to call me Marius in the ward, but couldn’t you bring yourself to do so at all other times? It makes me feel very old, for one thing, and for another, it gives me the disagreeable sensation that you don’t approve of me.’
Tabitha said briskly: ‘How ridiculous! Why shouldn’t I approve of you? And I certainly don’t consider you old.’ She added kindly: ‘I’m twenty-five myself, you know, and women get older much faster than men.’
‘And that,’ said Marius as he took his mug of coffee, ‘is the sort of comforting remark which you can be relied upon to make at all times.’
Tabitha thought he was joking; it wasn’t until they had sat down opposite each other at the kitchen table that she looked at his face and saw that he was serious and knew that he had meant every word—a fact which she found didn’t please her at all; it merely proved that he thought of her as Tabby—kind Tabby, if you like—but Tabby, just as everyone else did.
‘Very good coffee,’ said Marius pleasantly, and she nodded, unaware that he had been watching her closely. ‘We make excellent coffee in my country—you should try it some time.’
And so I would, thought Tabitha, still put out, if I had a socking great Bentley to take me there. ‘I’ve not been to Holland,’ she said out loud. ‘I’ve not been abroad since my father died.’
‘You like travelling?’
She nodded. ‘Very much, though I haven’t been far.’
He wanted to know where and she found herself telling him, reluctantly at first and then thawing to his charm and friendliness so that by the time they got up to go she found herself quite good-humoured again.
‘Would you like to swim first?’ he asked as they got into the car. ‘I thought we might take the Totnes road and cut down to Stoke Fleming. We’ve plenty of time, and there’s a good place for lunch at Churston Ferrers.’
‘That sounds nice.’ Tabitha’s voice was cool, hiding the delight welling up inside her. She thanked heaven in fervent silence that she could swim.
The beach was almost deserted. Tabitha, behind a convenient rock, put on the despised suit, bundled her hair into a sensible white cap, and ran down to the water’s edge, where she stopped because despite the heat of the day, the water felt unexpectedly cold; it was only Marius’s voice calling to her from some way out that made her plunge in, to forget the chilliness of the water in the delight of swimming. She swam as she danced, with grace and energy; it took her no time at all to catch up with Marius, loitering in shallow water, she suspected, to see if she was up to his standard. Side by side, they swam strongly out to sea and then turning, swam back, more slowly now, to the beach, where they stretched out, the waves breaking over their feet. Tabitha took off her cap and her hair streamed down in an untidy mass, shedding pins. She lay quiet in the sunshine while Marius picked them up one by one and made a tidy heap of them beside her. She eyed them worriedly. ‘I’ll never get my hair up again—it takes ages, and I’ve only a tiny mirror with me.’
‘Well, I’m not surprised. There’s yards of it, isn’t there? Can’t you put it up when we get to Churston Court? Put it all back in again and I’ll race you out to that dinghy.’
They swam for another half hour or so and finally left the water to lie down again, pleasantly tired, in the warmth of the sun. Presently Marius rolled over and propped his head on an elbow. ‘Nice,’ he observed laconically. ‘Peaceful and warm and delightful scenery—what more could one want?’
Tabitha opened one eye and found him looking at her, his face a good deal too close for her peace of mind. She shut the eye again and said, for lack of anything else, ‘Um’, thinking that Lilith would have known exactly what to say. Her stepmother had once told her that she had no sparkle and Tabitha, for once, agreed with her. She was still searching feverishly for some scintillating topic of conversation when Marius said:
‘You’re peaceful too. I don’t feel I have to be forever talking trivialities.’
Tabitha, without opening her eyes, said thank you, fuming silently. He made her sound like a feather pillow, or a middle-aged aunt, or anything else comfortable which could be ignored until wanted. She frowned and he continued: ‘Of course, you have misconstrued my meaning, but for the moment that doesn’t matter. I like your eyelashes.’
This time Tabitha opened her eyes and sat up. ‘You what?’ she queried in astonishment.
‘Like your eyelashes,’ he repeated patiently. ‘Most women have black spiky ones, but yours are thick and brown and the length they are meant to be. They look like those camel-hair brushes artists use.’
She went pink, recognizing a compliment and hoping it wasn’t just because she was Lilith’s stepsister. ‘Thank you,’ she said gravely. ‘I think I’ll dress.’ Marius got up and pulled her to her feet.
‘You don’t believe a word of it,’ he sounded resigned, ‘but of course these things take time.’
She was still puzzling out this remark when he caught her by the shoulders and kissed her without haste. The kiss was as gentle as his voice had been.
Churston Ferrers was near the river, between Dartmouth and Totnes. The restaurant was in a restored Queen Anne house, handsomely decorated and obviously expensive. Tabitha, in a powder room of sweet-smelling luxury, re-did her hair and her face too and went to join Marius in the bar, where over their Dubonnet they discussed what they should eat with the deep interest of people who were really hungry. They settled for prawn and oyster cocktails, filet steak with a salad, and strawberries and cream. The meal was delicious and they lingered over it, talking easily. They had reached the strawberries before Tabitha asked:
‘What part of Holland do you come from—that is, where is your home?’
Marius helped himself to cream. ‘Veere—a very small town on Walcheren island, that’s in Zeeland, in the south. My family have lived there for many years—one of my ancestors married a Scotswoman during the reign of James the First, and since that time there have been other marriages with both English and Scotswomen. My father’s brother is married to an Englishwoman—I was staying with them when I had Bill Raynard’s telephone call.’
Tabitha asked quickly before he could talk about something else: ‘Have you a practice?’
‘No—a few patients come to the house, but I have rooms in Rotterdam. I’m on the staff of one of the Rotterdam hospitals and I have some beds in Middelburg hospital as well.’
‘Oh, a consultant.’ Tabitha thought how unassuming his answer had been, and like him more than ever, which although it had nothing to do with loving him was, to her mind, almost as important. Hadn’t Mr Raynard said that he was embarked on a successful career? She remembered something else. ‘But you lecture—Mr Raynard said you were going…’
‘That’s right. I’ve been over here to team up with some orthopaedic chaps who are on to something new. I went up to Ambleside afterwards—it seemed a good idea to have a holiday before I start my lectures again.’
She wanted to ask where he was going, but didn’t; instead she asked:
‘You like that? More than surgery?’
He smiled slowly, his eyes crinkling nicely at their corners. ‘It suits me very well at present, though I imagine that when I marry I shall give up a great deal of the lecturing and concentrate on consultant surgery. You see, I should like to see as much as possible of my wife and children.’
Tabitha blinked her paintbrush eyelashes. ‘Yes, of course. Will you tell me some more about Veere?’
But presently, when they were in the car again, she found that they were talking about Chidlake and Mrs Crawley and Lilith. It seemed to her that he wanted to know a lot about Lilith, which, she reminded herself, was only to be expected—probably he’d brought her out for that very reason—so she was careful to colour her answers in Lilith’s favour, because even though she knew that she loved him so much that she would never want to marry anyone else—supposing that anyone else should ask her—she couldn’t stand in his way. She considered that Lilith wouldn’t make him a good wife, but that was hardly her business, so that when he wanted to know why Lilith wasn’t earning her own living, Tabitha made haste to point out that she was only just eighteen and hadn’t quite made up her mind, whereupon Marius wanted to know if she herself had made up her mind at that age, to which she hastily replied that yes, she had, but that had been different, and was shocked into silence by his bland: ‘Ah, yes—Cinderella.’
They crossed Dartmoor, pausing often to admire the scenery, and stopped at Chagford for tea. By now they had stopped talking about herself and her family and to her relief the conversation became the pleasant exchange of ideas and opinions. She was a voracious reader herself; it was nice to find someone who shared her pleasure in books and whose tastes were similar to her own. She discovered, too, that they enjoyed the same music and admired the same pictures too; it seemed inevitable that they should dislike the same things in life. They were still comparing notes on this interesting discovery when they arrived at Meg’s sister’s house, and as they went up the garden path together Tabitha was conscious of regret that they wouldn’t be able to finish their talk.
They went inside to wait while Meg got ready to leave and stayed for a cup of tea while flowers were picked from the garden and the best of the young peas and beans were gathered for them to take home. It was seven o’clock by the time they were on the road again, with Meg in the back seat, telling them about her day in her soft Dorset voice and asking questions about theirs. Outside the flat Tabitha turned to thank Marius for her day, but he cut her short by saying in the pleasantest possible manner: ‘Oh, but I’m coming in if I may’, and did so. They all went into the kitchen where Podger was waiting anxiously for his supper, and Marius sat quietly while the beast was petted and fed, and only then did Tabitha remember her manners sufficiently to say: ‘Oh, I do beg your pardon, only he was hungry—I’ll make some coffee and we can go into the sitting room.’
Mr van Beek didn’t move. ‘It’s a lovely evening,’ he observed. ‘I know of a nice place at Dulverton where we could have dinner.’
He glanced as he spoke at Meg and smiled and she said instantly: ‘Now that’s a good idea, Miss Tabby—you go along, that’ll give me a chance to do one or two things.’
‘What things?’ asked Tabitha with faint suspicion.
‘Now, love, you leave that to me.’ Meg sounded exactly as she had used to do when Tabitha had queried something that wasn’t her business when she had been a little girl and Tabitha responded unconsciously to her old nanny’s firm voice. She turned to Marius and asked: ‘But aren’t you tired?’
He said blandly: ‘After such a delightfully relaxing day? Not in the least. Shall I wait here and talk to Meg while you go and powder your nose?’
She powdered her nose; she would have liked to change her dress too, but felt it would hardly do because he was in slacks and a sports shirt and they weren’t likely to go anywhere grand, although she was sure she had seen a jacket on the back seat. She was ready in ten minutes, looking as neat and fresh as when they had set out that morning. The only concession to the occasion she allowed herself was a careful spraying of Fleurs de Rochelle, which maybe accounted for his ‘Very nice,’ when she went back into the kitchen.
They talked shop all the way to Dulverton, which was only a little more than half an hour’s drive away; they talked about Mr Bow too, although Marius gave her no inkling as to what he intended to do about his old friend when he was fully recovered. By the time they drew up outside the Carnavon Arms she was still none the wiser and had discovered that if her companion didn’t want to answer a question he had a gentle but firm way of not doing so. But she forgot this in the pleasure of his company; he could be an amusing companion when he chose and seemed intent on making her evening an enjoyable one. They dined off lobster Thermidor and a crême brulée and washed these delicacies down with a dry white Burgundy, followed by brandy with their coffee, which must have accounted for Tabitha’s feeling of well-being as they drove back to the flat, a feeling which evaporated slowly as he bade her a pleasant good night at the front door, refusing her offer of more coffee and making only the most conventional remarks about their day together.
By the time she was in bed, the evaporation was complete. Looking back over the day, she was unable to recall one single remark that she had made that had been witty, clever, funny or even faintly interesting. No wonder he hadn’t wanted to come in; he must have been glad to be rid of her. She fell asleep, convinced that she might just as well scrape her hair back and not bother with her make-up. She woke in the night, suddenly and piercingly aware of how much she loved him and, if he married Lilith, just as aware that she would have to go away because seeing them together would be more than she could bear, just as meeting him would be impossible. He would call her Tabby—probably Old Tabby, in a horribly kind brotherly fashion. She went to sleep much later, her cheeks still damp where she hadn’t bothered to wipe away her tears.