and made her feel like a million dollars. She went over to her mirror and stared into it; she was almost twenty-five, an old maid, she told herself, although she had probably had more proposals than any other girl in the hospital. But she had accepted none of them, for none of them had come from a man she could love. She sighed at the pretty face in the mirror and thought, a little forlornly, that perhaps she would never fall in love—really in love, especially as she wasn’t quite sure what sort of a man she wanted to fall in love with. She amended that though; he might possibly look a little like the owner of the E-type Jag.
She wasn’t on duty until one o’clock the next day; she got up early, made tea and toast in the little kitchen at the end of the corridor, and went out, to take a bus to Marks and Spencers in Oxford Street and browse around looking for a birthday present for her mother, who, even though she was fifty, liked pretty things. Serena settled on a pink quilted dressing gown and then loitered round the store until she barely had the time to get back to Queen’s. She went on duty with seconds to spare and found the department, for once, empty, but not for long; within half an hour there was a multiple crash in, as well as an old lady who had had a coronary in the street and a small boy who had fallen off a wall on to his head. It was almost five o’clock before she could stop for a quick cup of tea in the office and it was while she was gulping it down that Joan telephoned.
‘When are you off duty?’ she asked. ‘I’ve got this mad Dutchman wanting to know when you can come and see him.’
‘I’m up to my eyes,’ said Serena, crossly, ‘and likely to be for hours yet. I’m not off until nine o’clock anyway and I doubt if I get to supper at the rate we’re going.’
‘Come on up when you’re off, then—he needs cheering up. That cousin’s been in and I don’t know what he said, but Laurens is a bit down in the mouth.’
‘Laurens already!’ thought Serena as she said: ‘Surely he wouldn’t be so mean as to upset him after the accident…’
‘Well, Laurens did tell me that he’s done this sort of thing several times, and I suppose it’s a bit of a nuisance for his cousin having to leave the practice and sort things out.’
‘Probably,’ commented Serena, not much caring. ‘I’ll come if I can get away in time.’ She rang off, aware that whether she was on time or not, she would go.
He was lying in bed doing nothing when she got to his room at last. He looked pale and there was a discontented droop to his mouth which she put down to the after-effects of his accident; probably he still had a bad headache. But he brightened when he saw her and began to talk in a most amusing way about himself and his day. Of his cousin he said not a word and Serena didn’t ask, content to be amused at his talk.
She saw him again the next morning during her dinner time, for she went, as she sometimes did, to Joan’s office for the cup of tea they had before the start of the afternoon’s work. It was, of necessity, a brief visit and as she left his room she passed Doctor Gijs van Amstel in the corridor. She wished him a good day and gave him the briefest of glances, because she had the feeling that if she did more than that he might be disposed to stop and talk to her, and for some reason—too vague to put into words—she didn’t want to do that.
The next few days began to form a pattern drawn around her visits to the surgical floor. She still went out in her off duty, for she had a great number of friends. She shopped too and went to the cinema with Bill Travers, but the only real moment of the days was when she tapped on the door of number twenty-one and heard Laurens’s welcoming: ‘Come in, Serena.’
She had seen no more of his cousin, and when she mentioned it to Joan it was to discover that he had returned to Holland and would be back again shortly. And Laurens never spoke of him, although he talked about everything else under the sun. Serena listened, hardly speaking herself, wrapped in a kind of enchantment because here, at last, was the man she had been waiting for and who, she was beginning to hope, had been waiting for her.
It surprised her that Joan, although she admitted to liking Laurens very much, could find anything wrong with him. ‘He’s a charmer all right,’ she agreed, ‘but ducky, be your age—can’t you see that if he can chat you up so expertly, he’s probably had a lot of practice and doesn’t intend to stop at you?’
Which remark made Serena so indignant that she could hardly find the words to answer such heresy. ‘He’s not,’ she insisted. ‘He’s cheerful and nice to everyone, and why shouldn’t we be friends while he’s here?’
Joan smiled. ‘I daresay you’re right, Serena, only don’t get that heart of yours broken, will you, before you’re sure it’s worth risking it.’
She went home that evening, to spend her two days off at the large, old-fashioned rectory where her father and mother had lived for most of their married life.
She caught a later train than usual that evening, because she had gone to see Laurens first and it was quite dark by the time she got out at Dorchester to find her father waiting for her in the old-fashioned Rover he had had for such a long time. She kissed him with affection and got in beside him, suddenly glad at the prospect of the peace and quiet of home. They didn’t talk much as they went through the town and out on to the road to Maiden Newton because she didn’t want to distract her parent’s attention. He was an unworldly man in many ways; he had never quite realized that traffic had increased since he had first taken to motoring; in consequence he drove with a carefree disregard for other cars which could be alarming unless, like his family, his companions knew him well.
Serena, who had iron nerves and was a passable driver herself, suffered the journey calmly enough; there wasn’t a great deal of traffic on the road and once through Frampton they turned off into a winding lane which although narrow, held no terrors for either of them for they knew every yard of it.
The village, when they reached it at the bottom of a steep hill, was already in darkness; only the Rectory’s old-fashioned wide windows sent splashes of brightness into the lane as they turned in the always open gate. They had barely stopped before the door was flung open, and Serena jumped out to meet her family.
CHAPTER TWO
THERE were quite a lot of people in the doorway—her mother, as small as Serena herself and almost as slim, Susan, who was seventeen and constantly in the throes of some affair of the heart, so that everyone else had the utmost difficulty in remembering the name of the current boyfriend, Margery, twenty, and married only a few months earlier to her father’s curate, a situation which afforded great pleasure to the family and her mother, especially because she was the plain one of the children, and Serena’s two young brothers, home from boarding school for the Easter holidays—Dan was twelve and George, the youngest, was ten. Their father hoped that they would follow in his footsteps and go into the Church, and probably they would, but in the meantime they got up to all the tricks boys of their age usually indulged in.
It was lovely to be home again; she was swept inside on a cheerful tide of greetings and family news, all of which would have to be repeated later on, but in the meantime the cheerful babble of talk was very pleasant. ‘Where’s John?’ Serena tossed her hat on to the nearest chair and addressed Margery.
‘He’ll be here. He had to go and see old Mrs Spike, you know—down by Buller’s Meadow, she’s hurt her leg and can’t get about.’
Serena took off her coat and sent it to join her hat. ‘Being married suits you, Margery—you’re all glowing.’
Her sister smiled. ‘Well, that’s how it makes you feel. How’s the hospital?’
‘Oh,
