‘Professor or sir...’
‘What does he call you?’
‘Miss Beckworth.’
Esme hooted with laughter. ‘Julie, that makes you sound like an elderly spinster. I bet he wears glasses...’
‘As a matter of fact he does—for reading.’
‘He sounds pretty stuffy,’ said Esme. ‘Can we have tea now that Julie’s home?’
‘On the table in two ticks,’ said Luscombe, and went back to the kitchen to fetch the macaroni cheese—for tea for the Beckworths was that unfashionable meal, high tea—a mixture of supper and tea taken at the hour of half past six, starting with a cooked dish, going on to bread and butter and cheese or sandwiches, jam and scones, and accompanied by a large pot of tea.
Only on Sundays did they have afternoon tea, and supper at a later hour. And if there were guests—friends or members of the family—then a splendid dinner was conjured up by Luscombe; the silver was polished, the glasses sparkled and a splendid damask cloth that Mrs Beckworth cherished was brought out. They might be poor but no one needed to know that.
Now they sat around the table, enjoying Luscombe’s good food, gossiping cheerfully, and if they still missed the scholarly man who had died so suddenly they kept that hidden. Sometimes, Julie reflected, three years seemed a long time, but her father was as clear in her mind as if he were living, and she knew that her mother and Esme felt the same. She had no doubt that the faithful Luscombe felt the same way, too.
She had hoped that after the professor’s offer of tea and toast he would show a more friendly face, but she was to be disappointed. His ‘Good morning, Miss Beckworth’ returned her, figuratively speaking, to arm’s length once more. Of course, after Professor Smythe’s avuncular ‘Hello, Julie’ it was strange to be addressed as Miss Beckworth. Almost everyone in the hospital called her Julie; she hoped that he might realise that and follow suit.
He worked her hard, but since he worked just as hard, if not harder, himself she had no cause for complaint. Several days passed in uneasy politeness—cold on his part, puzzled on hers. She would get used to him, she told herself one afternoon, taking his rapid dictation, and glanced up to find him staring at her. ‘Rather as though I was something dangerous and ready to explode,’ she explained to her mother later.
‘Probably deep in thought and miles away,’ said Mrs Beckworth, and Julie had to agree.
There was no more tea and toast; he sent her home punctiliously at half past five each day and she supposed that he worked late at his desk clearing up the paperwork, for much of his day was spent on the wards or in consultation. He had a private practice too, and since he was absent during the early afternoons she supposed that he saw those patients then. A busy day, but hers was busy too.
Of course, she was cross-examined about him each time she went to the canteen, but she had nothing to tell—and even if she had had she was discreet and loyal and would not have told. Let the man keep his private life to himself, she thought.
Professor van der Driesma, half-aware of the interest in him at St Bravo’s, ignored it. He was a haematologist first and last, and other interests paled beside his deep interest in his work and his patients. He did have other interests, of course: a charming little mews cottage behind a quiet, tree-lined street and another cottage near Henley, its little back garden running down to the river, and, in Holland, other homes and his family home.
He had friends too, any number of them, as well as his own family. His life was full and he had pushed the idea of marriage aside for the time being. No one—no woman—had stirred his heart since he had fallen in love as a very young man to be rejected for an older one, already wealthy and high in his profession. He had got over the love years ago—indeed he couldn’t imagine now what he had seen in the girl—but her rejection had sown the seeds of a determination to excel at his work.
Now he had fulfilled that ambition, but in the meantime he had grown wary of the pretty girls whom his friends were forever introducing him to; he wanted more than a pretty girl—he wanted an intelligent companion, someone who knew how to run his home, someone who would fit in with his friends, know how to entertain them, would remove from him the petty burden of social life. She would need to be good-looking and elegant and dress well too, and bring up their children...
He paused there. There was no such woman, of course; he wanted perfection and there was, he decided cynically, no such thing in a woman; he would eventually have to make the best of it with the nearest to his ideal.
These thoughts, naturally enough, he kept to himself; no one meeting him at a dinner party or small social gathering would have guessed that behind his bland, handsome face he was hoping that he might meet the woman he wanted to marry. In the meantime there was always his work.
Which meant that there was work for Julie too; he kept her beautiful nose to the grindstone, but never thoughtlessly; she went home punctually each evening—something she had seldom done with Professor Smythe. He also saw to it that she had her coffee-break, her midday dinner and her cup of tea at three o’clock, but between these respites he worked her hard.
She didn’t mind; indeed, she found it very much to her taste as, unlike his predecessor, he was a man of excellent memory, as tidy as any medical man was ever likely to be, and not given to idle talk. It would be nice, she reflected, watching his enormous back going through the door, if he dropped the occasional word other than some diabolical medical term that she couldn’t spell. Still, they got on tolerably well, she supposed. Perhaps at a suitable occasion she might suggest that he stopped calling her Miss Beckworth... At Christmas, perhaps, when the entire hospital was swamped with the Christmas spirit.
It was during their second week of uneasy association that he told her that he would be going to Holland at the weekend. She wasn’t surprised at that, for he had international renown, but she was surprised to find a quick flash of regret that he was going away; she supposed that she had got used to the silent figure at his desk or his disappearing for hours on end to return wanting something impossible at the drop of a hat. She said inanely, ‘How nice—nice for you, sir.’
‘I shall be working,’ he told her austerely. ‘And do not suppose that you will have time to do more than work either.’
‘Why do you say that, Professor? Do you intend leaving me a desk piled high?’ Her delightful bosom swelled with annoyance. ‘I can assure you that I shall have plenty to do...’
‘You misunderstand me, Miss Beckworth; you will be going with me. I have a series of lectures to give and I have been asked to visit two hospitals and attend a seminar. You will take any notes I require and type them up.’
She goggled at him. ‘Will I?’ She added coldly, ‘And am I to arrange for our travel and where we are to stay and transport?’
He sat back at ease. ‘No, no. That will all be attended to; all you will need will be a portable computer and your notebook and pencil. You will be collected from your home at nine o’clock on Saturday morning. I trust you will be ready at that time.’
‘Oh, I’ll be ready,’ said Julie, and walked over to his desk to stand before it looking at him. ‘It would have been nice to have been asked,’ she observed with a snap. ‘I do have a life beyond these walls, you know.’
With which telling words she walked into her own office and shut the door. There was a pile of work on her desk; she ignored it. She had been silly to
