‘Perhaps you would be good enough to remain for a day or so after their return; my sister is bound to wish to talk to you, and their clothes and so on will need to be packed up. She will be glad of your help.’
Three days, thought Araminta, four at the outside, and after that I shan’t see him again. ‘Of course I’ll stay on, if Mrs Ingram wishes me to,’ she told him.
She was surprised when he asked, ‘You will go home? Your people expect you?’
‘Yes.’ She didn’t add that they would probably still be away. Her cousin would be there, of course, and she supposed she would stay there until she heard from the hospital. Which reminded her to add, ‘You told me that there was a chance that I might be accepted at the hospital…’
‘Ah, yes. It slipped my memory. There is indeed a vacancy; one of the students has left owing to illness. If you can start within a few days and are prepared to work hard in order to catch up with the other students you will be accepted.’
She should have been elated. He had made everything easy for her; she could embark on her plans for a nursing career. And it had been so unimportant to him that he had forgotten to tell her.
‘That is what you wanted?’ He had spoken so sharply that she hurried to say that, yes, there was nothing she wished for more.
‘I’m very grateful,’ she added. ‘Is there anything that I should do about it?’
‘No, no. You will receive a letter within the next day or two. And you have no need to be grateful. You have been of great help while the boys have been with me. They will miss you.’
The doctor spoke with an austere civility which chilled her, but he was aware as he said it that he would miss her too: her small cheerful person around the house, her quiet voice which could on occasion become quite sharp with annoyance. He had a sudden memory of her weeping into his shoulder and found himself thinking of it with tenderness…
He chided himself silently for being a sentimental fool. Miss Pomfrey had fulfilled a much needed want for a few weeks, and he was grateful for that, but once she had gone he would forget her.
Mr and Mrs Ingram duly arrived, late in the afternoon. It was a chilly October day, with a drizzling rain, and Araminta had been hard pushed to keep the boys happy indoors. But at last they shouted to Araminta from their perch by the front windows that their uncle’s car had just arrived with their mother and father.
‘Then off you go downstairs, my dears. Go carefully.’
She went to the window when they had gone, in time to see Mr and Mrs Ingram enter the house, followed at a more leisurely pace by the doctor. They would all have tea, she supposed, and sat down quietly to wait until Briskett brought her own tea tray. She had sought him out that morning and he had agreed with her that it might be a good idea if she were to have her tea in her room.
‘The boys will be so excited, and they will all have so much to talk about that I won’t be needed,’ she had pointed out.
He came presently with the news that there was a fine lot of talk going on downstairs and she hadn’t been missed.
‘They’ll send for you presently, miss, when they’re over the first excitement,’ he assured her. ‘The boss’ll want you there to give a report, as it were.’ He gave her a friendly nod. ‘Sets great store on you, he does.’
She drank her tea and nibbled at a cake, her usually splendid appetite quite gone. She would start packing this evening, once the boys were in bed, so that when she had done all she could do to help Mrs Ingram, she would be able to leave at once.
She was pouring another cup of tea when the door opened and the doctor came in.
‘I didn’t hear you knock,’ said Araminta in her best Miss Pomfrey voice.
‘My apologies. Why did you not come downstairs to tea?’
‘It’s a family occasion.’
He leaned forward and took a cake and ate it—one of Briskett’s light-as-air fairy cakes—and the simple act turned him from a large, self-assured man into a small boy.
Araminta swallowed the surge of love which engulfed her. However would she be able to live without him?
The doctor finished his cake without haste. ‘You have finished your tea? Then shall we go downstairs?’
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