and sidled away reluctantly.
‘Is that girl competent?’ rasped the professor.
Julia shot him an affronted look. ‘Nurse has been training for six months, so of course she is by no means competent, but she is sensible and understands exactly what she has to do. She has the makings of a good nurse.’ She drew an annoyed breath, ‘Sir’.
She could have saved her breath for he didn’t appear to be listening.
Dr Reed joined them then and they went through the slow precise tests and examination. The professor was studying the chart and Julia was straightening the bed clothes when she said quietly, ‘Mrs Collins’ eyelids are moving.’
So they began all over again. The woman was still unconscious but this time her pupils reacted to the professor’s torch. He straightened his vast person and stood looking down at her. ‘Now we are getting somewhere. Reed, let’s have a further lot of tests.’ He looked across at Julia and smiled and she blinked at its charm.
He was back again later in the morning to do his biweekly round, once more coldly polite. He didn’t smile once and after the round, in her office, he was bitingly sarcastic about a mislaid page of notes. They weren’t in the least important, for the patient was going home in the morning and they had probably got put in the file in the wrong order. It annoyed Julia but it hardly merited his caustic remarks about carelessness. She accompanied him to the ward doors and went back to her office and found the page almost at once. She put it neatly in to its place and said crossly, ‘Tiresome little man…’
‘Tiresome I may be,’ said the professor from somewhere behind her, ‘but you could hardly call me little.’
She swung round to face him, but before she could say anything, he added mildly, ‘I believe that I left my pen here.’
Julia took a surging breath, clenched her teeth on the heated remark she was about to make and handed him the pen. He took it from her with a brief thank you, advised her coldly not to allow her feelings to get the better of her, and went away again. ‘I swear I’ll throw something at you next time we meet,’ said Julia. Her habitual calm common sense had quite deserted her, it was a good thing that Pat went for her weekend after tea, for it meant that Julia was on duty until the night staff came on duty, and she had no time to indulge in any feelings.
Nigel was going by train to Bristol but because he was getting a lift by car from a friend who lived in Yeovil, he had chosen to take a train from Waterloo in the morning, and Julia had given herself a morning off duty so that she might see him on his way. It was an off duty she loathed for it meant coming back on duty at half-past twelve and a long, long day stretching out before her. All the same she left the ward at ten o’clock, tore into her street clothes and met Nigel outside the hospital. There wasn’t much time, they took a taxi and got to the station with only a few minutes to spare.
The train was full and Nigel, a sensible man, didn’t waste his time on unnecessarily protracted goodbyes; he gave her a quick kiss, with one eye prudently on the empty seats which were left, and then got into the train. There hadn’t been time to say much, thought Julia, smiling the fatuous smile people always smile at railway stations, really it had been a bit silly of her to come… She went close to the window where Nigel had been lucky enough to get a seat and called, ‘Good luck; I’m sure everything will be fine.’ She didn’t go on, for Nigel was frowning a little; he disliked the showing of feelings in public, so she retreated a few paces and stood well back and since she couldn’t glue her eyes to Nigel all the time, looked around her. No more than twenty yards away Professor van der Wagema was standing, a hand on the shoulder of a boy of ten or eleven, standing beside him. As she looked, he gave the boy a gentle shove, said something to him, and watched him get on to the train. The boy was in school uniform and there were other boys too. Julia looked from him to the professor and encountered a bland stare which sent the colour to her cheeks and her eyes back to Nigel. The train began to move and she made rather a thing of waving to Nigel who wasn’t taking any notice.
CHAPTER TWO
SHE WALKED AWAY from the professor as she waved, and stood watching the train out of sight; hopefully he would be gone when she turned round and started back down the platform.
Nothing of the kind; he was coming towards her and since she was at the end of the platform by now there was nowhere else to go, she had to walk back.
His ‘Good morning, Julia,’ took her completely by surprise; he had never called her anything other than Sister or Sister Mitchell. She said, ‘Good morning,’ in a rather faint voice and went on walking and he turned and walked with her, for all the world, she thought indignantly, as though he was sure of his welcome.
‘Why didn’t you go with Longman?’ he wanted to know.
She suppressed a strong wish to tell him to mind his own business.
‘He’s got an interview in Bristol for a registrar’s post. Of course, you know that already…’
‘Of course. I asked why you hadn’t gone with him.’
She had the ridiculous urge to tell him that Nigel hadn’t asked her to. ‘Well, I would have been on my own for most of the weekend…’ And that’s a silly thing to say she thought—she could expect some cutting remark about interviews only taking a couple of hours. But he didn’t say anything like that. ‘I’ve just seen my son off to school, will you have a cup of coffee with me?’
She stopped to look at him. ‘Well, it’s very kind of you—I’m on duty at one o’clock though.’
‘It’s just half-past ten,’ he assured her, grave-faced, ‘I’ve my car here, we can go somewhere quieter for ten minutes or so.’
‘Very well,’ said Julia, feeling her way; any minute he might change back into the coldly polite man she worked for, but he didn’t, he commented upon the splendid weather, the horror of large railway stations, the difficulty of parking and all she had to do was to murmur suitably.
She had seen his car before, of course, but only from her office window or sliding silently past her in the fore-court. This’ll be something to tell the girls, she thought as she got into the dark blue Rolls, only they’ll never believe me.
The professor drove through the streaming traffic with a monumental calm which aroused her admiration. She was an indifferent driver herself, driving the rather elderly Rover through the country lanes around her home, although she much preferred her bike or even her two feet. Ever since the time she had rammed the butcher’s van on a tricky corner, her nerve had suffered. Driving through London must be a nightmare; she said so now.
‘Indeed,’ agreed the professor politely, ‘but one gets used to it—one has to.’ They were driving down Gower Street and she wondered where they were going and wasn’t left long in doubt—the British Museum Coffee Shop. He parked by a vacant meter and ushered her through the book shop and the shop behind that which sold reproductions and into the restaurant itself. The two shops were quite full but the restaurant wasn’t. He pulled out a chair for her at a table for two and went to fetch their coffee. ‘Anything to eat?’ he asked over his shoulder.
She shook her head; she found him difficult to talk to, after years of being on her guard against his testy manner and cold politeness she had seldom been at a loss to answer him then, now she found herself tongue-tied. Common sense came to her aid as he sat down opposite her; she was used to difficult situations on the ward, dealing with awkward patients and visitors, wheedling new housemen to take her advice, listening
