and of course the housemen go for them first.’ She gave him a rather appalled look; the champagne had certainly made ducks and drakes of her usual quiet matter-of-factness. If he paid her a compliment now about being pretty, she would hate him for it.
He didn’t. He said with calm: ‘Young men always go for the pretty girls, that’s human nature, but young men grow up, you know.’
Probably he was right; he had a very assured way of speaking so that one believed him, and besides that, she felt at ease with him, as though they had been old friends for a very long time. She voiced her thoughts with unconscious forlornness. ‘I suppose you’ll be going back to Holland very soon?’
‘No, I’ve several people to see over here and there’s a seminar I’m going to in Edinburgh. I’ve two partners in the practice so that we can all get away now and again. I’ve promised to do some shopping for my mother and a cousin, perhaps you would help me with that? Tritia wanted to come with me, but she’s only nineteen and what would I do with her while I’m at the hospital? And I certainly didn’t want to take her to Edinburgh—she’s pretty and spoilt, the kind of girl young men look at and then get to know without waste of time.’
Not like me, thought Philomena sadly. I expect he’s in love with her. And to make it worse he added smoothly: ‘She lives at my home for the moment, an aunt of mine whose adopted daughter she is, has gone to Canada to visit her son. I must say Tritia gives life an added zest.’
Philomena could see the girl vividly in her mind’s eye; dazzlingly pretty, loaded with charm, small and dainty so that men rushed to open doors and lift things for her… Why, oh, why couldn’t she have been just a little like that? Certainly she was small, but she was what her stepmother laughingly called verging on the plump, which somehow carried an awful warning of what she would be like in ten years’ time, but prettiness had passed her by and she had always been in the habit of doing things for herself; no young man had ever felt the urge to open doors for her. She had charm, but she was quite unaware of that, just as she could see nothing remarkable about her green eyes and golden hair. She said humbly: ‘She sounds quite something. I expect you like taking her out.’
He smiled at her across the table. ‘Oh, I do, although I find it rather exhausting. She likes to dance until the small hours, on top of dinner too.’ It was hardly the moment for him to ask Philomena if she would like to go on somewhere and dance.
She schooled her voice to polite regret and seethed under the green dress. ‘I’m on early,’ she explained in a slightly wooden voice. ‘It’s been a delightful evening and I’ve enjoyed it so much. I really should get back…’
He glanced at the paper-thin gold watch on his wrist. ‘I did put it badly, didn’t I? I’m sorry. Won’t you change your mind? It’s early—barely half past ten.’
And now he was being polite, which made it even worse—he must be thinking of that cousin and wishing she were opposite him now. Philomena stifled a strong urge to burst into tears for no reason at all and repeated, just as woodenly, her regrets.
He was too well mannered to persist. He said all the right things and asked for the bill and while he paid it she looked around her, making a note of her luxurious surroundings so that later, when her friends asked her where she had been, she would be able to give a glowing account of her evening. It had been a lovely evening, she chided herself silently, and why on earth should she expect a chance acquaintance who had been kind enough to ask her to share his dinner to be more than casually friendly? And kind. She mustn’t forget that. She was aware, because her stepmother had told her so on many occasions, that she had very few social graces. It hadn’t been said unkindly—her stepmother was too easy-going to be unkind—merely a stated fact; probably the doctor had been bored stiff for the entire evening…
‘Why do you look so stricken?’ asked her companion quietly.
Philomena composed her ordinary features into a smile. ‘Oh, I suppose I was thinking about work tomorrow—rather a comedown after this.’ She waved a small, practical and well-kept hand at their surroundings. ‘An evening to remember—I can never thank you enough.’ She added inconsequently: ‘Celebrating after the occasion is never celebrating, is it?’
‘No, Philomena, it isn’t. Shall we go?’
The streets were quieter now and the short journey seemed even shorter than it was. She couldn’t remember afterwards what they talked about, but it couldn’t have been anything important. He got out and opened the car door for her when they reached the hospital, and walked with her to the entrance. The old building loomed dark and almost silent around them, its small night noises almost unnoticed; the hiss of steam from the boiler room, a child’s cry, the quiet voices coming from the Accident Room in the far corner and the bang of an ambulance door.
‘Oh, well,’ said Philomena, her hand on the door, and then took it away to offer to her companion. ‘Thank you once again, Walle.’ She smiled up at him, looming beside her in the dimness. ‘I hope you enjoy your seminar.’ She had quite forgotten the shopping.
His hand closed round hers. ‘Goodnight, Philomena. I’m not much good at quoting, but your Shakespeare had the right words: “Fortune, goodnight, smile once more, turn thy wheel.” King Lear, and rather apt, I would say.’
He opened the door for her and she went past him with a murmur. She longed to look back, but she didn’t, hurrying through the hospital while his words rang in her ears. Had he been polite again, or had he meant it? Probably polite, she decided sensibly as she opened her room door, just to round off her evening for her.
She would have liked to have sat and thought about it, but there was no chance; several of her friends had returned from their own celebrations and someone had made the inevitable pot of tea; it was nice to be able to throw a careless ‘Kettner’s’ at Jenny when she asked where she had been, and to see the looks of interest turned upon her person. Everyone broke into talk then, saying where they had been and what they had eaten, and just for once, instead of playing the role of interested listener, Philomena was able to toss back champagne, paté maison, lobster and Vacherin into the pool of conversation. She retired to bed presently, nicely sated with her companions’ cries of ‘Oh, Philly—how super!’ She should have slept soundly in deep content, but she didn’t; she lay awake for hours thinking about Doctor van der Tacx.
CHAPTER TWO
OF COURSE, Philomena overslept; she didn’t doze off until the early hours of the morning and although she heard the night nurse’s thump on her door, she turned right over and went to sleep again. The subdued thunder of nurses’ feet and the banging of doors brought her awake again, and by dint of bundling her hair up anyway and doing nothing at all to her face, she managed to get down to the breakfast table in time to swallow a cup of tea and gobble bread and butter and marmalade before making for Men’s Surgical. Sister had her days off, which made them short-handed for a start, and as well as that, there was a theatre list. Philomena took the report from the Night Staff Nurse, scanned the notes of the two new admissions since she had gone off duty, and plunged into the ward, to be instantly swallowed up in its routine. Drips to check, dressings to do, theatre preps, blood pressures—she didn’t do them all, of course, but she had to check that they were being done. She was glad when she could escape to the office and drink her coffee, and even that precious five minutes was blighted by a telephone call from the second part-time staff nurse to say that her youngest had the measles and she wouldn’t be coming in that afternoon. A sad blow for Philomena, for the other part-timer was on holiday, so it would mean that she would have to stay on duty all day and the next day as well, unless the Office sent someone to relieve her. But nobody suggested that when she telephoned the Office, only a harassed voice wanted to know
