‘No—not to remember. A poet, wasn’t he—seventeenth century. Why?’
“‘Quoth Hudibras, I smell a rat; Ralpho, thou dost prevaricate.’”
The pink, which had subsided nicely, returned. ‘I’m not prevaricating—well, perhaps, a little.’
‘That’s better. I always feel that one can’t be friends with anyone until one has achieved honesty.’
She asked, bewildered: ‘Are we to be friends?’
‘We’re bound to see quite a lot of each other, are we not? I think we might make the effort—I’m quite harmless, you know.’
She wondered if he was; his manner was casual and he talked with an air of not minding very much about anything—on the other hand, he read an early English poet well enough to quote him. She inquired: ‘Where did you learn to speak such good English?’
They were going slowly through Dorchester, caught up in the early morning traffic. He shrugged. ‘Oh, I don’t know—school, and visits here, and university.’
‘A Dutch university?’
‘Yes.’ And that was all he said, much to her annoyance; for all his casual air he was hardly forthcoming. Never one to give up, she tried again. ‘Do you know this part of England well?’
‘Moderately well. I came here when I was a boy.’ His lips twitched with amusement, he added: ‘Visiting, you know.’
She didn’t know, which was so annoying, but she gave up after that and sat in silence while he urged the little car along the road to Puddletown and beyond to Wimborne. They were approaching that small town when he observed; ‘You’re very quiet.’
There were a number of tart replies she would have liked to make to that, but instead she said meekly: ‘I thought perhaps you liked to drive without talking—some people do.’
‘My dear good girl, did I give you that impression? You must forgive me—let us by all means talk.’ Which he proceeded to do, very entertainingly, as he sent the Mini belting along towards the Winchester bypass. Going through Farnham he said: ‘I haven’t stopped for coffee—I thought that a little nearer London would serve our purpose better. You’re on duty at one o’clock, I gather.’
She admitted that she was. ‘It was kind of you to come,’ she began. ‘It’s taken up a great deal of your day.’
‘Well, I can’t think of a better way of spending it,’ he replied pleasantly. ‘I don’t much care for London—a day or so is all right, but it’s hardly my cup of tea.’
‘Oh? What’s your cup of tea, Doctor?’
‘A small town, I suppose, where I know everyone and everyone knows me, a good day’s work and a shelf full of good books and German to keep me company.’
She was aware of an odd sensation which she didn’t stop to pursue. ‘Your wife?’
His bellow of laughter rocked the car. ‘My dog—a dachshund and a bossy little beast. He goes everywhere with me.’
‘He must miss you.’
‘Yes, but Jaap and his wife, who live with me, take good care of him.’
She tried to envisage his home. Did he live in digs? It sounded like it, but surely he had a surgery—or did he share Laurens’s? She longed to ask but decided against it. Instead she started to talk about the hospital, a topic which seemed safe ground and devoid of conversational pitfalls.
It was almost midday when he turned off the A30 and took the road to Hampton where he pulled up outside the Greyhound. ‘Ten minutes?’ he suggested. ‘Just time for something quick—it will have to be sandwiches, I’m afraid, too bad we couldn’t have made it lunch.’
Serena murmured a polite nothing because her mind was so full of seeing Laurens again that even ten minutes’ stop was irksome. She drank the coffee he ordered and nibbled at a selection of sandwiches with concealed impatience.
She had exactly fifteen minutes to change when they reached Queen’s. She thanked her companion hurriedly, said that she supposed that she would see him again, and fled to the Nurses’ Home, to emerge ten minutes later as neat as a new pin and not a hair out of place. She was, in fact, one minute early on duty—and a good thing too, she decided as she made her way through the trolleys, ambulance men, nurses and patients and fetched up by Betsy, who said at once: ‘Oh, good! Thank heaven you’re here. I’m fed up, I can tell you—not a moment’s peace the whole morning. There’s a cardiac arrest in the first cubicle, an overdose in the second and an old lady who slipped on a banana skin—she’s got an impacted fracture of neck of femur—oh, and there’s an RTA on the way in—two so far, both conscious and a third I don’t even know about yet.’
‘Charming,’ declared Serena, ‘and I suppose no one’s been to dinner.’
‘Oh, yes, they have—Harris. Yes, I knew you’d be pleased, ducky, but take heart, you’ve got your two part-timers coming on in half an hour. Harris can’t do much harm in that time.’
‘You must be joking, Betsy. Thanks for holding the fort, anyway. See you later.’ Serena was taking off her cuffs and rolling up her sleeves ready for work. She cast her eyes upwards, adding: ‘If I survive.’
She paused at about four o’clock when the immediate emergencies had been dealt with and the part-time staff nurses, back from their tea, took over. In the office she accepted the tea Agnes had made for her and started to sort out the papers on her desk. It was amazing that so much could accumulate in two days. She was half way through a long-winded direction as to the disposal of plastic syringes and their needles when the telephone rang. It was Joan, wanting to know impatiently why she hadn’t been up to see Laurens.
‘You must be out of your tiny mind,’ said Serena crossly. ‘I haven’t sat down since I got back until this very minute and if I get up there this evening, it’ll be a miracle.’
She slammed down the receiver, feeling mean, and knowing that her ill-humour was partly because she hadn’t been able to get up to Surgical, and saw no chance of doing so until she went off duty that evening. She would apologize to Joan when she saw her. She poured herself another cup of tea and went back to the disposable plastic syringes.
It was gone half past nine when Serena at last went off duty. The night staff nurse and her companion, a male nurse, because sometimes things got a bit rough at night, had come on punctually, but there had been clearing up to do and Serena had elected to send the day duty nurses off and stay to clear up the mess herself. She had missed supper and she thought longingly of a large pot of tea and a piled-high plate of toast as she wended her way through the hospital towards Surgical. One of the Night Sisters was already there because it had been theatre day and there were several post-op. cases needing a watchful eye. She said ‘Hullo,’ to Serena when she saw her and added: ‘He’s still awake, do go in.’
Serena, tapping on the door of number twenty-one, wondered if the whole hospital knew about her friendship with the Dutch doctor and dismissed the idea with a shrug. He was in bed, although he told her immediately in something like triumph that he was to have a walking iron fixed the following morning and that his concussion had cleared completely. ‘Come here, my little gipsy,’
