deal of time saying ‘Hullo’, until Laura, getting in a word edgeways at last, asked for her father or Joyce. She had to repeat her question and when Mrs Whittaker finally grasped what she was saying, it was disappointing to be told that there was no one home.
Well, it had happened before. Laura left a message to say that she would get old Mr Bates to fetch her in his taxi from the village, and rang off. It took her a little while to get hold of him, and then she had had to wait half an hour for him to reach her, and she was tired and peevish by the time she opened the house door and went inside.
The hall was cool and dim, but the sitting room had a great many windows, allowing the spring sunshine to pour into the room. There was no one there, though; she went through the house then, and found the kitchen empty too, with a note on the table ‘Soup in saucepan’, presumably meant for her. She went upstairs to her room next, unpacked her overnight bag, got into a rather elderly tweed skirt and a thin sweater and went downstairs again.
It was almost one o’clock by now and there was no sign of lunch or anyone to eat it; possibly her father and godfather had gone off on some expedition of their own and forgotten all about her arrival, but Joyce knew that she was coming. Laura hunted round the sitting room once more, looking for a note, and found none. She wandered into the kitchen, served herself some of the soup and sat down on the kitchen table, supping it from a bowl while she decided what she should do with her afternoon, for it looked as though she would have nothing but her own company for the next few hours.
But in this she was wrong; she had finished her soup and was sitting doing absolutely nothing, her head full of Reilof van Meerum, when the front door opened and she heard Joyce’s voice, high and gay. She heard her father’s voice too and then his rumbling laugh, and a moment later the kitchen door opened and her sister and the Dutch doctor came in.
Laura didn’t get up, indeed she was too surprised to do so—Joyce hadn’t mentioned that he would be there and just for a moment she could think of nothing at all to say. It was Joyce who spoke.
‘Laura—oh, darling, I quite forgot that you were coming home.’ She bit her lip and went on quickly: ‘Daddy and Uncle Wim wanted to go to some fusty old bookshop and Reilof turned up—wasn’t it lucky?—and took them in the car, and then we went for a drive—we’ve just had lunch at the Wise Man…’ Her eyes fell on the empty bowl and she gave a charming little laugh. ‘Oh, poor you—I told Mrs Whittaker not to bother because you’d probably not come…’
The man beside her gave her a thoughtful glance and Laura saw it and said at once: ‘My fault, I usually telephone, don’t I—I changed my mind at the last minute and got Bates to fetch me from the station.’ She smiled at her sister. ‘I wasn’t hungry, anyway.’ She turned the smile on the doctor. ‘Hullo—how’s the little dog?’
He answered her gravely: ‘He’s fine. I had to leave him at home, of course, but my housekeeper is his slave and will take good care of him.’ He paused for a moment. ‘If I had known that you were coming home this weekend I would have given you a lift.’
Very civil, thought Laura, even though he was dying to get Joyce to himself; he could hardly keep his eyes off her, and indeed her sister looked delightful in a new suit and those frightfully expensive shoes she had wheedled out of her father. ‘And my new Gucci scarf,’ thought Laura indignantly, suddenly aware that her own clothes did nothing to enhance her appearance.
She got down from the table then, saying in a bright voice: ‘I’m going along to see Father and Uncle Wim—what happened to Mrs Whittaker?’
Joyce’s blue eyes were like a child’s, wide and innocent. ‘I told her to take the rest of the day off. Laura darling, I do feel awful…’ and Laura thought without anger: ‘If she weren’t my sister, I would believe her, too.’
‘You see,’ Joyce went on, ‘Daddy and Uncle Wim are going to Doctor Wall’s for dinner—his wife will be at the WI meeting and Reilof is taking me to that gorgeous place at Great Waltham…’
‘And we shall be delighted if you would join us,’ the doctor interrupted her gently.
He was kind, thought Laura; he might have dozens of faults, but lack of kindness wasn’t one of them. ‘That’s sweet of you,’ she replied hastily, allowing her voice to show just sufficient regret, ‘but actually I’ve reams of things to do and I was looking forward to an evening on my own.’ For good measure she added, ‘We’ve had a pretty hectic time on the ward.’
‘Poor old Laura,’ Joyce spoke with facile sympathy, ‘but if that’s what you want to do…’
Laura considered for one wild moment telling Joyce what she really wanted to do, and then looking up she found the doctor’s dark, questioning gaze upon her, so that she hastily rearranged her features into a vague smile and said enthusiastically, ‘Oh, rather. There’s nothing like a quiet evening, you know.’ She prolonged the smile until she reached the door, said ‘’bye’ to no one in particular and left them together.
The house was very quiet when everyone had gone out that evening; her father had pressed her to go with them to the doctor’s, but if she had done so the three old friends would have felt bound to exert themselves to entertain her, whereas she knew well enough that they wanted nothing better than to mull over the latest medical matters. So she repeated her intention of staying at home, saw the two elder gentlemen out of the front door and a few minutes later did the same for her sister and Doctor van Meerum. Joyce looked radiant and the doctor looked like a man who had just won the pools. She went back indoors, shutting the door firmly behind her, and wandered into the kitchen to get herself some supper. Scrambled eggs, rather watery because she cried all over them.
But no one would have known that a few hours later; she sat, composed and restful, in the sitting room, her newly washed hair hanging in a shining mousy cloud down her back, the coffee tray and sandwiches set ready, the local paper on her lap. The older gentlemen got back first, as was to be expected; they had drunk most of the coffee and made great inroads upon the sandwiches before they were joined by Joyce and Reilof van Meerum. Joyce glowed, looking quite breathtakingly lovely—enough to turn any man’s head, and it was obvious that that was what had happened to the doctor—he wasn’t a man to show his feelings, but some feelings couldn’t be concealed. Laura went away to get more coffee and when she returned he took the tray from her, asked her kindly if she had enjoyed her evening, and expressed the hope that she would be free to join them on the following day.
Laura, aware of Joyce’s anxious wordless appeal to say no, said with genuine regret and a complete absence of truth that she had promised to go back early as she was spending the afternoon with friends. The doctor’s polite regret sounded genuine enough but hardly heartfelt, and later, when they had parted for the night, she wasn’t surprised when Joyce came to her room.
‘Thank heaven I caught your eye,’ she observed. ‘Heavens, suppose you’d said yes!’ She smiled sunnily. ‘He was only being polite, you know. We’re going out for the day—to Cambridge—he was there, simply ages ago.’ She settled herself on the end of the bed. ‘Laura, isn’t it super—I’m sure he’s going to ask me to marry him.’
Laura was plaiting her hair at the dressing table and didn’t turn round; although she had been expecting Joyce to tell her just that, now that she heard the actual words she didn’t want to believe them. She finished the plait with fingers which trembled and said carefully: ‘Is he? However do you know?’
Joyce laughed, ‘Silly—of course I do,’ and she added with unconscious cruelty: ‘But you wouldn’t know…’
Laura smiled ruefully. ‘No, I wouldn’t.
