She addressed the room in general in a quite loud voice. ‘Professor ter Bavinck? I’ve been sent from Theatre B with a specimen.’
The shoulders which had caught her eye gave an impatient shrug; without turning round a deep voice told her: ‘Put it down here, beside me, please, and then go away.’
Lavinia’s charming bosom swelled with indignation. What a way to talk, and who did he think he was, anyway? She advanced to his desk and laid the kidney dish silently at his elbow. ‘There you are, sir,’ she said with a decided snap, ‘and why on earth should you imagine I should want to stay?’
He lifted his head then to stare at her, and she found herself staring back at a remarkably handsome face; a high-bridged nose dominated it and the mouth beneath it was very firm, while the blue eyes studying her so intently were heavy-lidded and heavily browed. She was quite unprepared for his friendly smile and for the great size of him as he pushed back his chair and stood up, towering over her five feet four inches.
‘Ah, the English nurse—Miss Hawkins, is it not? In fact, I am sure,’ his smile was still friendly, ‘no nurse in the hospital would speak to me like that.’
Lavinia went a splendid pink and sought for something suitable to say to this. After a moment’s thought she decided that it was best to say nothing at all, so she closed her mouth firmly and met his eyes squarely. Perhaps she had been rude, but after all, he had asked for it. Her uneasy thoughts were interrupted by his voice, quite brisk now. ‘This specimen—a snap check, I presume—Mevrouw Vliet, the query mastectomy, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I’ll telephone down.’ He nodded at her in a kindly, uncle-ish way, said: ‘Run along,’ and turned away, the kidney dish on his hand. She heard him giving what she supposed to be instructions to one of his assistants as she went through the door.
She found herself thinking about him while they all waited for his report; the surgeon, his sterile gloved hands clasped before him, the rest of them ready to do exactly what he wanted when he said so. The message came very quickly. Lavinia wondered what the professor had thought when his sharp eyes had detected the cancer cells in the specimen, but possibly Mevrouw Vliet, lying unconscious on the table and happily unaware of what was happening, was just another case to him. He might not know—nor care—if she were young, old, pretty or plain, married or unmarried, and yet he had looked as though he might—given the right circumstances—be rather super.
It was much later, at supper time, that Neeltje wanted to know what she had thought of him.
‘Well,’ said Lavinia cautiously, ‘I hardly spoke to him—he just took the kidney dish and told me to go away.’
‘And that was all?’
‘He did remark that I was the English nurse. He’s…he’s rather large, isn’t he?’
‘From Friesland,’ explained Neeltje, who was from Friesland herself. ‘We are a big people. He is of course old.’
Lavinia paused in the conveyance of soup to her mouth. ‘Old?’ she frowned. ‘I didn’t think he looked old.’
‘He is past forty,’ said a small brown-haired girl from across the table. ‘Also he has been married; his daughter is fourteen.’
There were a dozen questions on Lavinia’s tongue, but it wasn’t really her business. All the same, she did want to know what had happened to his wife. The brown-haired girl must have read her thoughts, for she went on: ‘His wife died ten years ago, more than that perhaps, she was, how do you say? not a good wife. She was not liked, but the professor, now he is much liked, although he talks to no one, that is to say, he talks but he tells nothing, you understand? Perhaps he is unhappy, but he would not allow anyone to see that and never has he spoken of his wife.’ She shrugged. ‘Perhaps he loved her, who knows? His daughter is very nice, her name is Sibendina.’
‘That’s pretty,’ said Lavinia, still thinking about the professor. ‘Is that a Friesian name?’
‘Yes, although it is unusual.’ Neeltje swallowed the last of her coffee. ‘Let us go to the sitting-room and watch the televisie.’
Lavinia met the professor two days later. She had been to her first Dutch lesson in her off duty, arranged for her by someone on the administrative staff and whom probably she would never meet but who had nonetheless given her careful instruction as to her ten-minute walk to reach her teacher’s flat. This lady turned out to be a retired schoolmistress with stern features and a command of the English language which quite deflated Lavinia. However, at the end of an hour, Juffrouw de Waal was kind enough to say that her pupil, provided she applied herself to her work, should prove to be a satisfactory pupil, worthy of her teaching powers.
Lavinia wandered back in the warmth of the summer afternoon, and with time on her hands, turned off the main street she had been instructed to follow, to stroll down a narrow alley lined with charming little houses. It opened on to a square, lined with trees and old, thin houses leaning against each other for support. They were three or four stories high, with a variety of roofs, and here and there they had been crowded out by much larger double-fronted town mansions, with steps leading up to their imposing doors. She inspected them all, liking their unassuming façades and trying to guess what they would be like on the other side of their sober fronts. Probably quite splendid and magnificently furnished; the curtains, from what she could see from the pavement, were lavishly draped and of brocade or velvet. She had completed her walk around three sides of the square when she was addressed from behind.
‘I hardly expected to find you here, Miss Hawkins—not lost, I hope?’
She turned round to confront Professor ter Bavinck. ‘No—at least…’ She paused to look around her; she wasn’t exactly lost, but now she had no idea which lane she had come from. ‘I’ve been for an English lesson,’ she explained defensively, ‘and I had some time to spare, and it looked so delightful…’ She gave another quick look around her. ‘I only have to walk along that little lane,’ she assured him.
He laughed gently. ‘No, not that one—the people who live in this square have their garages there and it’s a cul-de-sac. I’m going to the hospital, you had better come along with me.’
‘Oh, no—that is, it’s quite all right.’ She had answered very fast, anxious not to be a nuisance and at the same time aware that this large quiet man had a strange effect upon her.
‘You don’t like me, Miss Hawkins?’
She gave him a shocked look, and it was on the tip of her tongue to assure him that she was quite sure, if she allowed herself to think about it, that she liked him very much, but all she said was: ‘I don’t know you, Professor, do I? But I’ve no reason not to like you. I only said that because you might not want my company.’
‘Don’t beg the question; we both have our work to do there this afternoon, and that is surely a good enough reason to bear each other company.’ He didn’t wait to hear her answer. ‘We go this way.’
He started to walk back the way she had come, past the tall houses squeezed even narrower and taller by the great house in their centre—it took up at least half of that side of the square, and moreover there was a handsome Bentley convertible standing before its door.
Lavinia slowed down to look at it. ‘A Bentley!’ she exclaimed, rather superfluously. ‘I thought everybody who could
