forgot to tell you, I’ve had a letter from someone who was at St Judd’s when I was there—oh, it must be ten years ago. He was my houseman for a time—a splendid fellow and very clever. We’ve kept up a casual friendship since then but we haven’t met—he’s a Dutchman and has a practice in Holland, I believe, though he comes over to England fairly frequently. He’s in London now and wanted to know if he might call and see me. I phoned him last night and asked him for the weekend.’
It was her uncle’s free weekend and Matilda had cherished one or two ideas as to what they would do with it. Now they were to be burdened by some elderly foreigner who would expect a continental breakfast and want coffee instead of tea. Matilda, who in all her twenty-six years had never set foot outside Great Britain, tended to think of Europeans as all being cast in the same mould.
She said hastily, ‘That’ll be nice for you, Uncle. I’ll get a room ready. When do you expect him?’
‘Tomorrow, after lunch. Friday’s clinic shouldn’t be too full—there’s not much booked so far, is there?—and I’ll be free after that. You can entertain him if I get tied up.’ He added a shade anxiously, ‘He’s a nice chap.’
‘I’ll make some scones,’ said Matilda. The steak and kidney pudding would never do; on the other hand she could slip down to the butchers and get more steak… Calabrese and carrots, mused Matilda silently, and creamed potatoes; there was enough rhubarb forced under the old bucket at the end of the garden to make a pie. They could have beef on Saturday instead of Sunday; perhaps he would go on Sunday morning. ‘Does he know this part of the country, Uncle?’
‘I don’t believe so. It’ll make a nice change from London.’
She was left on her own presently to get one of the bedrooms in the roomy old house ready for the guest and go to the kitchen and tell Emma.
‘Dutch?’ questioned Emma, and sniffed. ‘A foreign gentleman; probably have faddy ways with him.’
‘Well, he oughtn’t to be too bad,’ mused Tilly, ‘if he comes over to London fairly often, and Uncle said he does. I’ll go and pull some leeks, shall I?’ She pulled on an old jacket hanging behind the kitchen door. ‘I’ll get a few apples in at the same time—we might have an apple crumble…’
When she got back she saw to the waiting-room and the surgery, made sure that the room was ready for her uncle’s guest and went down to the kitchen to help with lunch.
It was after morning surgery on the following day that the phone rang. It was Mr Jenkins, sounding agitated.
‘It’s the missus, started the baby and getting a bit worked up.’
It was Mrs Jenkins’s fourth; Uncle Thomas wouldn’t be back for half an hour at least and the Jenkins’s farm was outside the village. Moreover, it seemed to Tilly that Mr Jenkins sounded as worked up as his wife.
‘The doctor’s out,’ she said soothingly. ‘I’ll jump on my bike and come and have a look, shall I? I’ll leave a message for Uncle; he shouldn’t be long.’ She heard Mr Jenkins’s heavy sigh of relief as she hung up.
She warned Emma to let her uncle know as soon as he came in, fetched her midwifery bag, put on the elderly coat once more and cycled through the village to the farm.
A far cry from the clinically clean delivery rooms of the hospital, she thought, going into the cluttered warm kitchen. Mr Jenkins was hovering over a boiling kettle on the stove, under the impression that, since this was the common practice on the films in similar circumstances, it was the correct thing to do.
‘Hello,’ said Tilly cheerfully. ‘Upstairs in bed, is she?’
He nodded. ‘Carrying on, too. Good thing the kids have gone over to Granny’s.’
‘I’ll go up, shall I?’ Tilly went up the wooden staircase at the end of the passage and knocked on the half-open door at the top. Mrs Jenkins was sitting on the bed, looking apprehensive.
She looked more cheerful when she saw Tilly, who put her bag down and sat down beside her, put a comforting arm round her and asked pertinent questions in a calm voice.
Presently she said, ‘Well, I don’t suppose it’ll be long—shall I have a look? And how about getting into bed?’
The bouncing baby boy bawling his head off with satisfying vigour arrived with commendable speed. The doctor, arriving some ten minutes later, pronounced him to be in splendid health, declared his satisfaction as to Mrs Jenkins’s well-being, observed that he might leave Tilly to make her patient comfortable, and left again to see the last of his patients.
It was almost one o’clock by the time Tilly had seen to Mrs Jenkins, bathed the baby, shared a pot of tea with the proud parents and got back on her bike. Mrs Jenkins’s sister would be arriving very shortly and she would be in good hands.
‘See you this evening,’ called Tilly, and shot off down the lane.
She was a bit dishevelled by the time she reached home; there was a fierce wind blowing, and a fine, cold rain falling, and she had had to cycle into it. She propped the bike against the wall outside the kitchen door and hurried into the house, kicking off her shoes as she went and unbuttoning her coat. There was no one in the kitchen; she went through to the hall and opened her uncle’s study door, still struggling with the coat. Her uncle was standing by his desk, and sitting in the big leather chair by the fire was a man. He got to his feet as she went in, an extremely tall man, broad-shouldered and heavily built. Somewhere in the thirties, she guessed fleetingly, and handsome, with lint fair hair and heavy-lidded blue eyes. Surely not their visitor?
But he was.
‘Ah, Matilda, there you are.’ Her uncle beamed at her, oblivious of her untidy person. ‘Here is our guest, as you see, Rauwerd van Kempler.’
She said, ‘How do you do,’ in her quiet voice and had her hand engulfed in his large firm grasp. He greeted her pleasantly and she thought peevishly that he might have come at a more convenient time.
The peevishness sparked into temper at his bland, ‘I’m afraid I have arrived at an awkward time.’ His glance took in her shoeless feet and her damp face and her hair all over the place.
‘Not at all,’ said Tilly coolly. ‘I got tied up with the Jenkins’s baby.’ She looked at her uncle. ‘I hope you haven’t been waiting for me to have lunch?’
‘Well, dear, we had a good deal to talk about, you know, over a drink.’ Her uncle studied her carefully. ‘I expect you’d like to tidy yourself—I’ll pour you a glass of sherry while you’re doing it.’
Tilly, aware that the Dutchman was studying her as carefully as Uncle Thomas, took herself out of the room.
Very deliberately she did her hair and her face and changed into a skirt and sweater. On the way to the study she went to the kitchen to see if Emma needed any help. She didn’t, so Tilly joined the two men, accepted the sherry and made polite conversation about the weather. Her uncle looked at her once or twice, puzzled by her aloofness; she was puzzled by it herself.
Dr van Kempler had an easy way which made conversation simple, and he had good manners; it was obvious that he and her uncle had a lot in common and plenty to talk about, but he was careful to keep the talk general and when Uncle Thomas began to reminisce, headed him off with unobtrusive
